Book review: Stars on Ice by Kay Woodward

With a host of good friends, a few rivals to keep her on her toes and a delicious new love interest, it’s going to be a smooth ride for the budding figure skater.

Or is it?

Kay Woodward’s cooler than cool Skate School series (Usborne, paperback, £5.99) is really hotting up as ice maiden Frankie sets her sights on a place in Team GB for the Winter Olympics.

Packed with thrills and spills, fun and friendships, tensions and tantrums and dreams and drama, Frankie’s adventures at her Swiss skating school have won the hearts and imaginations of an army of young fans.

Frankie is just like any other girl except she has a glorious gift for skating which has taken her from her humble home in England to an ‘Ice Palace’ in the snowy Alps.

And this is the term when things could really happen for Frankie...if she can prove she is one of the school’s best pupils, she could be flying to the World Figure Skating Championships in New York and then on to the Olympics.

There’s also the small matter of Dylan, or rather ‘the lovely Dylan’. Skating with him last term proved to be one of the best feelings in the world. They’re not ‘an item’ yet but perhaps they might be...

But, of course, things don’t go to plan – for a start, a film crew has moved in to record a weekly TV reality show, only the very, very best will now make it to the Olympics and if the draconian skating coach discovers any hint of a romance between Dylan and Frankie, they will both be on the first flight home.

Will Frankie make the GB Team, and are she and Dylan doomed?

A magical mix of skating, school life, scandals, success and sparkling storylines puts the shine on a super series that would suit any girl aged nine and over.

Another group of future superstars are those wacky Rockley Park kids who are in for a haunting in at the fabulous Fame School.

Fame School: Trick or Treat (Usborne, paperback, £4.99) is the latest adventure in Cindy Jefferies’ upbeat and fun-filled series featuring a bunch of wannabe popstars who are learning the tricks of the trade at special music school.

Danny James is one of the school’s best drummers, but he’s struggling with his latest piece of music and fears that his future career might have hit the buffers before it even starts.

Meanwhile, class joker Marmalade Stamp has made a resolution to play a trick on everyone in his class by the end of Halloween in four days time. Will he manage it?

More worryingly, the school ghost, a Victorian girl who fell to her death from the roof of Rockley Park, is reported to be walking the corridors again.

And she only appears when something dreadful is about to happen...

Fame School has a cast of lovable and lively characters whose mishaps and musical melodramas are perfectly in tune with any child aged seven and over who ever dreamt of being a star.

The perfect way to learn how to cope with triumph and disaster...