Shine!

Shine by J.J. and Chris Grabenstein is a school story for 8 year olds about being the least impressive person in a very impressive room.

What happens

Piper Milly calls herself a blender. She's the one dressed in black in the wings, holding a cup of room-temperature water, while her dad's school choir wins the biggest a cappella contest in the county.

Her mum was the opposite. Antoinette Poliesei sang, played the cello at Carnegie Hall and left two plaques behind her at Chumley Prep. She died when Piper was three.

Then on Christmas Eve, Chumley Prep offers Piper's dad a job. Double the salary, his own music room, a Steinway grand. Free tuition for Piper, starting on the second of January.

Chumley is where the snooty a cappella kids came from. The ones who laughed at her dad's black gym shoes and white socks.

So Piper turns up at a school where the cars are Teslas, the mums carry handbags with initials stamped all over them, and her own shirt collar is frayed because there wasn't money for a new one. Her mother's name is on the Wall of Honour in the corridor she walks down every day. A teacher who was in her mother's class says she expects great things.

What Piper has is astronomy. She knows why room-temperature water is kinder to a singer's throat than cold. She can explain the butterfly effect while scraping dog mess out of her trainers. Science is the one hour of the day she isn't dreading.

Then her English teacher sets a project. Not the usual essay about your future career. He wants each of them to work out who they want to be, starting today.

Piper is very funny about her own life and never once sorry for herself, which is what makes her such good company. The bits that ache are quiet ones. Her dad is so delighted about the Steinway that he doesn't notice she's frightened. She talks to a photograph of her mother, because that's where her mother is.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Piper's mum died when she was three and the loss runs right through the book, in plaques and photographs and the things people say about her. It isn't an event you're waiting for, it's the ground Piper stands on. A child who has lost someone may feel it keenly.

What to read next

Max Einstein is in the library too, for a reader who likes a girl whose brain is the best thing about her. She's twelve, homeless, sleeping above a horse stable, and her first big idea involves a great deal of manure.