Skateboard Star

Jennifer Torres's Skateboard Star is a sweet, snappy sisters story for 7 year olds about a girl with a magic sewing kit and a big sister in a slump.

What happens

Catalina likes things perfect. Pencils in rainbow order. Outfits planned a week ahead. Early for absolutely everything (she'd call it right on time).

Her big sister Coco is the opposite. Messy, fearless and brilliant on a skateboard. Until suddenly she isn't. She keeps crashing, even on tricks she's landed a million times.

There's a skating competition coming up, and first prize is a shiny new skateboard. If Coco takes first place, her old board could finally go to Catalina.

So Catalina offers to fix Coco's lucky flannel shirt. It's faded and holey and missing two buttons. And her sewing kit is no ordinary sewing kit. It turns clothes into magic disguises.

The disguises are the best bit. A kitten hoodie turns Catalina into a cat so she can spy on her sister. A pillowcase with three black stripes sewn on makes her a bumblebee!

Then she tries the flannel on herself, and an idea pops into her head that she probably shouldn't have...

Catalina tells it herself, and she's very funny about how perfectly put together she is. There's plenty of Spanish mixed in, always explained, like her great-aunt's saying about taking small steps on a long journey.

There's a lovely thread about being proud of how far you've come, even when things don't turn out perfect. If your reader is a bit of a perfectionist, they'll probably see a lot of themselves in her. Who hasn't wanted to skip straight to being brilliant at something?

This is the fourth Catalina book. Her family, her best friend Pablo and the kit are all introduced again as she goes, so a new reader can jump in.

What to read next

Want to see where the magic began? Catalina Incognito is the first book, when her glamorous great-aunt gives her that battered old sewing pouch for her birthday.