The Tour at School (Because You're the New Kid!)

It’s a really important job, being a tour guide. You have to tell the New Person EVERYTHING. Where the toilets are. The best playground game. The Emergency Meet-Up Place. And absolutely, definitely, what happened to Barry the goldfish.

Told entirely in the voice of one irrepressible child guide, this is a gloriously funny, big-hearted celebration of school life — and of the small acts of kindness that make it less frightening. Clapham’s first-person narration places the reader directly in the tour. ‘HELLO! I’M YOUR TOUR GUIDE!’ the guide declares, and from that moment on, we’re not observing — we’re included. The running commentary is breathless, digressive, deeply sincere, and often hilariously off-topic (well, to adult readers anyway). There are warnings not to get lost (until the end of the tour), dramatic asides about soap that smells ‘amazing-zing-zing’, and careful headcounts that sometimes go slightly awry.

Shireen is inspired here. Her bold, textured characters — all wide eyes and emphatic shapes — bring warmth and comic exaggeration in equal measure. The spreads hum with detail: corridor chaos, library hush, playground mayhem, tempestuous toilets. Yet amid the noise, she captures something tender. When the Emergency Meet-Up Place becomes a quiet confession of having once been the lost ‘New’ yourself, the book shifts — gently, honestly — into empathy. The final hug lands with emotional precision.

Funny, inclusive, and brimming with heart, this is a school tour that understands what really matters: not the toilets, not the timetable — but the courage it takes to say, ‘We could just become friends?’

A brighter school would absolutely have this kind of tour guide… and frequent, unscripted visits from a certain Marcus. Observant readers will delight in all the hidden gems.