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Allan Woodrow's Unschooled is a school story for 8 year olds about two best friends put in charge of opposite teams.
George and Lilly are complete opposites and have been friends since before either of them can remember anything. George takes a notebook into assembly and makes notes. Lilly can't sit still, makes things out of clay and never finishes them, and has won 228 games of noughts and crosses in a row because George lets her.
Spirit Week is the big send-off before they leave the school. Twin Day on Monday, a different contest every day, and Field Day at the end worth half the points. This year there's a secret prize, and nobody will say what it is.
Then the principal reads out the teams, and George and Lilly are on different ones.
They both end up captain, and neither of them meant to. Lilly's hands go up before she's thought about it, mostly because she hardly ever loses at anything. George only volunteers because the girl who should be captain is off sick and he's been taking notes for her anyway.
The clever thing is that the book's told by both of them, turn and turn about. You get Lilly's version of a moment and then George's, and they don't match. She thinks she's joking about being enemies. He isn't sure she is. She's certain she can be ruthless all week and still be his best friend on Saturday. Her own mum brings up, over dinner, the time Lilly got hold of another girl's list of biscuit orders by promising to be her best friend for a week.
So you can see it coming and the children can't, which is a lovely feeling to read.
It's warm rather than mean. Both of them are properly likeable, the Spirit Week events are gloriously silly, and there's a friendship bracelet handed over early on that you'll be thinking about right to the end.
If you've got a reader who enjoys a whole class scheming together, Class Dismissed is by the same author. A teacher walks out in the middle of a lesson, the school office never finds out, and the class quietly decide not to mention it to anyone.
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