Diary of an Accidental Witch: Ghostly Getaway

By Author / Illustrator

Honor and Perdita Cargill, Katie Saunders

Genre

Magical Realism

Age range(s)

Publisher

Little Tiger Press Group

ISBN

9781788953405

Format

Paperback / softback

Published

04-08-2022

Synopsis

'Monday 17th January: It's finally time for the school trip! And we're off to the SPOOKIEST castle I have EVER seen!'

Bea Black is in her second term at witch school and she can't wait for the Year Seven residential trip to the haunted Cadabra Castle. The students are excited to fly around the famous GO pitch, explore the ancient turrets and have a magical time ... if they can just stop arguing! Except Ms Sparks has other plans - this isn't a holiday, it's a team-building exercise for a class who desperately need to learn to work together.

But with rumours of a ghost terrorizing the castle, Bea has a lot more to contend with than scavenger hunts and hikes! Not least being paired up with Blair Smith-Smythe, her ULTIMATE frenemy! Will the class learn anything from their time at Cadabra? And more importantly, will Bea and Blair manage to avoid hexing each other for long enough to solve the spooky mystery?

A perfect potion of magic and mischief, DIARY OF AN ACCIDENTAL WITCH is THE WORST WITCH meets TOM GATES.

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Reviews

It is the second term at the School for Extraordinary Arts attended by our accidental witch Bea Black, having been mistakenly enrolled in a witch school by her unsuspecting Dad in a recent move to the very unique, ever -changing weather village of Little Spellshire. This term, Bea is beginning to see the successes of her hard work at all things witchy (she is still the class Frog Monitor and can now levitate her friend Fabi to the ceiling without dropping him) and seems to be settling and becoming an accidental but actual witch after all.

In Ghostly Getaway, the Y7 class are thrilled to be experiencing their first school trip away – to Cadabra Castle. Expect all things spooky and mystifying in this bump-in–the-night adventure ! The purpose of this wildly exciting trip is teamwork; "Remember that many witch hats are often better than one!” exclaims Head Teacher, Miss Sparks. As Cadabra Castle is revealed from the ruins in a Nothing-To-See-Here-But-A-Pile-Of-Old-Stones charm, Bea and her friends are bound for four days of a most enchanting and unusual educational visit. Every meal is deliciously, charmingly cake based and levitating boulders, branches and hay bales for a team building skill proves to be more fun than expected . If only Bea could stop worrying about her dad moving them away from Little Spellshire, her new potion-mixing peers and her fledgling flying on a broomstick skills…

Each of the Accidental Witch books in this series enchant the reader more and more - they are simply a joy to read - with their huge sense of fun, warmth and likeability of the characters, together with the fabulous illustrations that draw us in further and help bring the characters to life.

Friendships, teamwork, sharing your worries and believing in yourself are positive and important themes that are key to the story. These books are perfect for younger, independent readers and will be snapped up in schools; Magic, mystery, calamity and cauldrons await…

224 pages / Reviewed by Jennifer Caddick, teacher