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The Secret School Invasion by Pamela Butchart is a very silly school story for 7 year olds about a merger that Izzy and her gang are certain is an invasion.
It starts with the grown ups going strange. The office ladies are screaming down the phones. A sign goes up on the head teacher's door about a teachers-only emergency assembly, put there by an arm that comes out and disappears again.
Izzy and the others get into that assembly anyway. Jodi has decided the rules no longer apply.
Then the dinner ladies go on strike. One of them climbs on the stage, grabs the microphone, announces it, drops the microphone and leaps off. The rest bang their ice cream scoops on the serving trays.
The actual news is that a hundred and two pupils from St Balthazar's are joining the school. St Balthazar's are their sworn enemies. Mr Killington walks straight out to his car, which leaves Year 6 with no teacher at all.
Izzy tells the whole thing in one breathless rush with the important words in CAPITALS. It sounds exactly like a child telling you about their day at top speed before you have even sat down.
Her friends are the best part. Maisie faints whenever she is scared and needs a Ribena or a Twix afterwards (or both, if it has been a big shock). Jodi supplies the theories. Zach mainly wants to know what everyone is going to eat now.
They have a den under the stairs and a code phrase for when things are SERIOUSLY wrong. They are also very practised at putting Maisie in the recovery position.
What your reader gets is the enormous logic of small children. Shoes that shiny cannot be innocent. Nobody in this book thinks that is a stretch, and that is why it is funny.
Worth saying that the noise level is high all the way through. There is shouting, fainting, teachers in tears and a lot of running. It is played entirely for laughs, but if you have a child who is anxious about their own school changing, this one does start with everybody panicking about new pupils arriving.
If they take to Izzy telling them what REALLY went on, they will want Attack of the Demon Dinner Ladies next. Same school and the same four friends, except this time something very odd has happened to the dinner ladies and the shepherd's pie has stopped appearing.
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