The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle

Hannah Foley's The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle is a magical adventure for 9 year olds about a girl with a secret tail.

What happens

Avery Buckle is part girl and part cat. She keeps her long black tail hidden under her clothes, which makes sitting still in class very tricky (hence all the detentions). Halloween is the one night a year she can let it out.

She doesn't live with her parents. She's never known them. Instead she's looked after by Bob and Cindy, who are two guardian spells. They shimmer slightly under bright lights. Cindy irons Avery's knickers and X-rays the post. Bob collects cheese graters and tells terrible jokes. What's a cat's favourite colour? Purr-ple.

Lately, though, Avery has had the feeling she's being followed. And strange parcels keep arriving with no note. A piece of sea glass. An old guidebook to a corner of Edinburgh. A peach stone.

At the school Halloween disco, the lights go out. Shadowy creatures rise out of the floor, all teeth and grabbing arms, and they're coming for Avery. She escapes through an attic window, straight into thin air. And then her best friend Low catches her, because it turns out Low has a secret too.

From there the peach stone drags them both through the night sky to Edinburgh. At the back of a stationery cupboard in a library they find a door into a house full of witches, a troll who hugs too hard and an eight-legged porter in purple corduroy trousers.

It's a really fun mix. The magic is everywhere in ordinary places, like the cracks in the pavement and the back of the sofa. And the jokes keep coming, even when things get scary. Avery's bedroom for the night is a drawer. So is the bathroom (the flush sticks).

The shadow creatures are properly menacing, and there's talk of faeries being attacked. So for a nervous reader it's worth reading the first few chapters together. But Avery is brave and funny, and she's never alone for long.

What to read next

If you've got a reader who has ever felt a bit different, Avery will feel like a friend. And if they want more magic after this, The Apprentice Witch follows Arianwyn, a young witch who's teased by the popular girls on the very day of her big assessment.