Alice Éclair Spy Extraordinaire: A Dash of Daring
Sarah Todd Taylor
Nosy Crow

This is the fourth and sadly, final story in the delicious series starring creative, kind, resourceful Alice Eclair.
Alice and her mum are anticipating a relaxing week in the mountains when they arrive at Hotel Anise. It’s not long though before Alice starts feeling disappointed: the atmosphere is far from exciting and she isn’t getting the opportunity to enjoy the hotel’s facilities. However Claude’s appearance on the scene, talking of a complex, ingenious cipher machine that can convert messages into unreadable code in seconds soon dispels her frustration. The problem is the machine has gone missing, along with its maker, Claude’s inventor friend, Jan.

Before long Alice is drawn into a mystery. Then her dastardly Uncle Robert appears on the scene: what is he doing in the hotel? Meanwhile, iJan’s daughter who is staying at the Olympic training camp on the outskirts of the city with her brother, has been receiving unpleasant messages as she prepares to compete in the cycling events to be held in Berlin.

Having persuaded her mother to let her go to the training camp, Alice begins working undercover while at the same time tackling the tricky issue of creating healthy but tasty desserts in the Olympic kitchens. Then to her surprise and delight, her friend Sophie, France’s most talented engineer appears and she offers to introduce Alice to the cyclist Adele and her brother, Hugo. Hugo in turn introduces her to his carrier pigeon. Determined to solve this case, Alice faces many challenges as she follows the numerous clues, some of which as you might expect, are red herrings, sets about working out who she can trust and cracking lots of codes along the way.

A tasty conclusion to the tale and the series: Alice emerges with some new friends including Hugo who happens to use a wheelchair. The author took advice from a fellow author and friend in her sensitive portrayal of this character.

The Summer Dolphin
Holly Webb, illustrated by David Dean
Little Tiger

Lillie and her family are having a fortnight’s holiday in the Gower, Wales, staying in Gran and Grandpa’s new home. Things get off to a disappointing start for Lillie who discovers that she’ll have to sleep on the attic floor between the beds of her older sister, Frankie and their cousin Lara.
Almost immediately the older girls gang up and Lillie is made to feel a baby, excluded from their activities but no one else appears to notice she’s lonely and upset.

Then during a boat trip around the harbour, the crew mate Alice, mentions a tidal island that’s a wild bird reserve during the summer months where they might see dolphins as well as seals and birds. Suddenly there in the water they spy a flicking tail, then more; it’s dolphins swimming alongside the boat. One of them in particular, it seems to Lillie, is happy and this makes her feel happy too. Surely that dolphin smiled at me, she thinks to herself.

Later, Frankie and Lara flatly refuse to let Lillie accompany them on a rock-pooling expedition. Instead she decides to go off by herself in the hopes of seeing the dolphins, especially the calf, again, something that when her parents discover where she is, troubles them considerably. However it doesn’t stop Lillie going off exploring alone again after Lara is particularly horrible to her. There’s a problem though, for Lillie doesn’t understand the tide at all and she’s lost track of time. Worse, is that with water up to her chest, she can’t remember any of the special ways to keep safe she’d been told of in school. Then she catches sight of a dolphin; could it be trying to help her?

Whether read by newly confident solo readers or aloud to a class, this mix of sister dynamics and adventure is a story that will be enjoyed by animal lovers especially. David Dean’s black and white illustrations underscore the characters’ feelings throughout the book.