My seven-year-old and I raced through this wonderful story (although I did have to steal our copy away to catch-up a few times as she kept reading on without me!)
Bea Black and her dad have moved to the small, and rather unusual village, of Little Spellshire where the weather changes from snow to sun in the time it takes to buy some sweets. Instead of enrolling her in the well respected and completely normal Academy, Bea's dad accidentally puts her name down for the The Spellshire School for Extraordinary Arts. Bea isn't even very good at art - she'd much rather be doing PE on the Academy's fancy sports pitch - and the fact that the school is located in the middle of the woods isn't very appealing either. Things go from bad to worse when, on her first day, Bea discovers that The Spellshire School for Extraordinary Arts is a school for witches, where physics involves levitation, PE takes place on broomsticks and maths is, unfortunately, still regular maths. With the school Halloween party coming up and bullies mocking her every move, now would really be a good time to discover she could do magic.
Bea's voice is so strong throughout, it's impossible not to be drawn in to this book's hilarious ups and downs. We LOVED the crossed out words, the footnotes and lists (which involve everything from making friends to moving schools as quickly as possible!) The classes themselves are very funny too, with a joyful touch of magic that will have readers enviously wishing they could find themselves in Bea's position.
From class frogs to grumpy cats, cloaks to Halloween parties, this book has everything you'd expect from a magical school, alongside brilliant characters and plenty of mayhem. It's lighthearted and lots of fun, but also covers some important and really relatable topics like struggling to make friends and fit in at a new school.
Kate Saunder's illustrations add another enjoyable element to the comedy, bringing to life many of the story's laugh-out-loud moments.
We enjoyed this book so much that we've already bought another copy to gift to a friend, and we can't wait for book two to find out what Bea gets up to next. I cannot recommend it enough - especially with Halloween coming up next month!
Thank you Little Tiger for sending us a copy to review.
The Diary of an Accidental Witch is written by Perdita and Honor Cargill and illustrated by Kate Saunders