Pirate Academy: Sword Echoes (UCLan Publishing, £7.99), continues Justin Somper’s seagoing school saga, in which students Neo Darkwater, Jacoby Blunt and Jasmine Peacock (the pirate names have panache – others include Mayday Salt and Porfirio Wrathe) continue the fight against the dastardly League of True Pirates. Jacoby and Jasmine accidentally become undercover agents in the enemy’s training school, while Neo acquires a sword with extraordinary powers – but can this help the good students conquer the forces of evil? Wave after wave of adventures ensue but Somper still finds room to individualise and grow his characters. Age nine up.
More seagoing superpowers in LD Lapinski’s Artezans: The Whispering World (Orion, £7.99, sequel to The Forgotten Magic), set in a community where people’s special abilities vary from mere party tricks to the perilous commanding of dreams. Twins Edward and Elodie are shipwrecked on an island, where they are befriended by the only child in town, Laurie. Everyone seems welcoming. But why do Laurie’s foster parents make her wear gloves? Whose is the voice Elodie keeps hearing – and whom can the twins really trust? Lapinski is a bewitching landscape artist, adding colour to her inventions with wild weather and woodland descriptions, a dash of Scots vocabulary and mythological allusions. Age nine up.
Entirely Emmie by Terri Libenson (HarperCollins, £9.99) is a friendly, feel-good graphic novel, the ninth in a middle-grade series. It’s a classic tale of a “shy girl and geeky boy on school camping trip”, styled as Emmie’s diary, with comic-strip interludes from Joe’s perspective. All the compulsory elements are included – mean girls, friendship tensions, ill-fated crush on popular boy, gross food, pranks and pongs, scary rock-climbing… We can guess who will end up friends with whom – but it’s such fun to come along on the journey.
