Author(s): Jacqueline Harvey

Adventure and Real Life Stories

Move over, Matilda, and step aside, Madeline, there's a new charming miniature heroine about to make her mark. Can one tiny girl change a very big school? Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones is waving goodbye to her weeping parents and starting her first day at boarding school. But something is wrong at Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale Academy for Proper Young Ladies. The headmistress, Miss Grimm, hasn't been seen for ten years. The prize-winning flowers are gone. And a mysterious stranger is camping in the greenhouse. Alice-Miranda must complete a series of impossible tests. Can she really beat the meanest, most spoilt girl at school in a solo sailing mission? Could she camp in the forest all on her own for five whole days and nights? Well, of course. This is Alice-Miranda, after all.

Kathleen's review - What happens when a person with a hyphenated name marries another person with a hyphenated name?" Alice-Miranada Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones happens! Happily she has no difficulty rattling it all off every time she introduces herself to anybody, nor does anybody at the Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale Academy for Proper Young Ladies, where she is the youngest ever girl to obtain entrance (at 7 and 1/4). Alice-Miranda is a precocious little girl with a prodigious memory. She should be ghastly, but she's lovely. She always looks for the best in people, and as she assumes she's always right, she always finds the best!

This is the first in a series - they're great spoofs so adults will laugh their way through them, and your children (and grandchildren) will delight.