Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo ***

Stop me if you've heard this one. When they discover Charlie Bone has magical powers, they send him to a special school where he champions the good and frees the sleeping princess (oh I mean girl). Regardless of the familiarity of the plot, Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo is a charming YA novel, with magical cats, good and evil grandmothers, an antique bookstore, a boy with talks to animals and another who listens to photographs.

This series (Children of the Red King) is a excellent choice for fantasy readers that are beyond Roald Dahl, but not quite ready for J K Rowling, perhaps on the same level as the C S Lewis's Narnia series, but without the heavy Christian allegory. (Even more deja vu: this book by a British author is published in the US by Scholastic.)