V.I.P. – I’m With the Band

Jen Calonita's I'm With the Band is a funny diary story for 8 year olds about a girl who ends up on tour with her favourite boy band.

What happens

Nobody loves Perfect Storm more than Mac Lowell. She talks to the posters on her bedroom walls. She knows songs that haven't even come out yet. She's also a brilliant artist, secretly working on her own comic about a girl band that fights crime between shows.

When Mac and her best friends Scarlet and Iris miss out on concert tickets, there are tears all round (and some very dramatic hyperventilating). Then Mum walks in with seats near the front and backstage passes!

Meeting the band doesn't go to plan. Mac faints into a row of photographers' tripods. Zander, the lead singer, helps her up and kisses her hand, and she floats for days.

Then comes the really big news. Mum is the band's new tour manager, and Mac is going too. A month or two on the road, with a tutor instead of school.

Her first morning goes spectacularly wrong. A shaken can of green energy drink explodes all over Zander, who can't stand anything green. Is there anything worse than your hero asking who let you in?

It's all written as Mac's journal, full of CAPITALS, top five lists and daydreams. She's dramatic and daft and very likeable. The band turn out to be real boys rather than posters (smelly tour bus and all), which is half the fun.

A heads-up for parents, though. Mac is twelve, and a lot of this is crushes and plans for her first school dance. She also sneaks one of those energy drinks and keeps a secret from Mum about a poster she sends to Zander. None of it is dark, but it does read older than the shelf. It'll suit a reader who's already curious about pop stars and fan crushes.

What to read next

If they're hooked on life on the road, Mac and Perfect Storm are back in Battle of the Bands, where the boys are recording their first full album.