What Not to Do if You Turn Invisible

Ross Welford's What Not to Do if You Turn Invisible is a funny, touching mystery for 11 year olds about a girl who wakes up on a sunbed and can't see herself.

What happens

Ethel Leatherhead lives with her Gram on the blustery north-east coast. She's in Year Eight, she keeps her head down, and she is desperate to get rid of her acne. Some kids at school have started making pizza jokes about her face.

She has tried EVERYTHING. Soap and water. Garlic and honey. Nettle tea. So when a free secondhand sunbed turns up, plus a dodgy skin remedy she's bought online behind Gram's back, she tries those too.

Then she falls asleep under the lights for an hour and a half. When she wakes, her hand isn't there. Nor are her legs. In the mirror, there's nothing but the garage behind her.

What's it actually like to be invisible? Ethel tells you in wonderfully odd detail. She can still see with her eyes shut. Water shows up for a second on the way down her throat. (And yes, so does the sick when she throws up, which some readers will LOVE.)

She talks straight to you all the way through, and she's brilliant company. Sharp, a bit sarcastic, and much more hurt by the teasing than she lets on.

Then there's Elliot Boyd, the loud new boy from London who supports the wrong football team and follows her home talking about the lighthouse. Nobody likes him. Ethel certainly isn't going to be friends with him. We'll see!

A family mystery is building too. At her great-gran's hundredth birthday party, the old lady, who hardly ever speaks, says something that makes Gram go white.

A few things parents might want to know. Ethel's mum died of cancer when she was three, and her dad, a heavy drinker, left before that (both are backstory). Ethel admits she once swore at a neighbour by accident, without spelling the word out. And it's worth a quick chat about not copying her with sunbeds or pills off the internet!

If your reader likes a funny narrator with a lot going on inside, this is a great one to hand over.

What to read next

For another Ross Welford story where impossible science turns up in an ordinary family, Time Travelling with a Hamster has Al creeping into his old house at one in the morning to find the time machine his dad left behind.