Stargirl Academy 6 – Olivia’s Twinkling Spell

Vivian French's Stargirl Academy 6 - Olivia's Twinkling Spell is a fairy godmother story for 7 year olds about a girl who has to help her cousin without giving away a secret.

Olivia is at her Auntie June's house when she finds her cousin Hannah face down on the bed, crying over her weekend homework. There are screwed-up bits of paper all over the floor.

Hannah makes her promise not to tell. Then out it comes. She can't read. Not properly.

And right at that moment Olivia gets the Tingle. That's the call to the Academy, a school that sits on a cloud and trains children as modern fairy godmothers.

She has five stars on her necklace. One more and she's a proper Stargirl.

Today's lesson is the Choosing Spell, taught by Fairy Prim McBee, who is so tall she has to fold herself to get through a door and so loud that jars fall off the shelves when she laughs. The spell lets you nudge somebody towards a choice. Use it for the wrong reasons and it runs backwards.

Then the Golden Wand spins and points at Olivia, so she gets to pick who the Stargirls help. She picks Hannah. Except she promised not to say what's wrong, so her friends have to fix a problem they aren't allowed to know about.

That's a lovely bit of pressure for a small book.

Olivia tells you all this herself, in short chapters and a great many CAPITALS, and she worries about roughly everything. Time travel, flying, spiders, whether she's brave enough. If your reader is a worrier too, she's very good company.

One thing to flag. Hannah gets a properly horrid time. A boy in the corridor calls her dumbo and thick as a stick and chants a rhyme about wetting the bed, and her teacher keeps telling her she isn't trying when she is trying as hard as she can. It's early on and it isn't dwelt on, but a child who finds reading hard might feel it. A child who has watched a friend get picked on will probably just be furious on Hannah's behalf, which is rather the point.

This one sits near the end of the run, too. The girls already know each other and already have five stars, so a few things turn up without much explanation.

If this one goes down well, go back to the start with the first Stargirl Academy book. Lily is living with a great-aunt who calls her a little worm and doesn't feed her properly, and the cloud castle drifts past the window while she's mopping up spilled tea.