Alexander Graham Bell; Alfred the Great; Anne Frank; Dick Whittington; Elizabeth I; Louis Braille

With so much children's non-fiction suffering from the tyranny of the double-page spread it is very encouraging to see that this series has been designed to be read from cover to cover rather than dipped into for reference. What are biographies, after all, if they are not stories? Indeed at first glance these books look like any number of fiction series for the primary years. Imagine 'Jets' without the zaniness and you have some idea of their size, look and feel, with good sized print and cartoon-style line drawings on every page.

They differ markedly in tone. Alfred the Great and Elizabeth I are both straightforward accounts. Dick Whittington is an unhappy marriage of the facts and the legend of panto fame. Alexander Graham Bell is very jolly with plenty of humorous touches in the illustrations. The events in Anne Frank are treated with due seriousness though the enormity of her situation and the full horror of the concentration camps are not fully conveyed. This makes you wonder whether it is possible to deal with such subjects for this age range without a great deal of adult guidance and explanation. Louis Braille was, for me, the most satisfying perhaps because I did not know much about him before I began to read but also, I think, because his life is a story of one enormous achievement, so the writer is able to deal with it in some detail. All the books have time-lines, a page or two of further information but no index. Put into book boxes or shelve these titles with the fiction where they will be used by Year 8s as well as by their target audience.