A heart-warming story with a great girl-power message

A cheerful paean to books, big thighs and working hard to realise your dreams

Funny and touching

There are useful human life lessons here: create a team, Balding urges, delegate, do your research, believe in yourself, and magic ensues

Will inspire girls to aim high

Charlie is a feisty, funny girl who will appeal to pony-mad readers who'll devour all the inside knowledge of the equine world that Balding brings to her debut

It's full of hilarious tiny details, which our sharp-eyed hero - and clever parents and children - can spot to solve the mysteries.

This is picture book storytelling at its best. Text and illustration perfectly integrated so that the eye moves easily across the page and the attention is held. Every page is carefully designed allowing different perspectives, creating excitement and movement through the juxtaposition of whole page and split page spreads as well as techniques adopted from graphic novel or film. There are not enough picture books that can reach older children. This is one - and it is a delight.

This is an utterly delightful book, packed with quirky text and illustrations and reall unusual.

How can you not want to read this book over and over again? How can you not want to share it with everyone you meet?

Mini Grey is as skilful as ever as she unravels a complex, tragic and very funny story through action-packed illustrations, captions and speech bubbles.

A gentle, entertaining story.

A Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year—and it's an "Outstanding Merit" title!