The Ginger Ninja - The Dance of the Apple Dumplings ¦ The Ginger Ninja - St Felix for the Cup!

Two more Ginger Ninja stories aimed at children beginning to read by themselves. With funny, cartoon style illustrations featuring speech balloons and action sequences fully integrated with the text, these 64-page books have the dynamic of the highly successful 'Jets' series.

These books are good yarns - my class love them - but Shoo Rayner gives young readers much more than a light-hearted school story. Within the jokey framework, he grasps the nettle and develops the difficult themes of bullies and victims but, vitally, he does this in a way children can respond to.

These new stories are sequels to The Ginger Ninja and The Ginger Ninja: The Return of Tiddles in which Ginger first meets the bully Tiddles and, to be most effective, the books should be read in order (information in the books or on the covers about reading order would have been useful). These stories will help children to talk about bullying and possibly handle better this highly stressful part of growing up. Understanding that Tiddles, a bully, is terrified at the prospect of playing pawball against his previous school because he was himself systematically bullied there, will help give children an understanding of the ghastly cause and effect often at work in this issue. Deep themes these, but they are handled with ultra sensitive kid gloves by Shoo Rayner.