[I wrote this review in 2007]

**11 short entertaining stories**

A good readable collection of short stories from the author of the Ingo series for children, and other adult's fiction. The stories are each between about 10 to 20 pages long. They're all easy to read and well-written. Diverse subjects, from the boy who thinks his elder teenage brother has been taken over by an alien, the girl who dreams of playing in the neighbour's garden instead of being stuck indoors all day, the futuristic story of the boy whose family moves to Mars due to the severe effects of global warming on earth... and so on.

A couple of the stories may leave children a little confused. There are two historical stories, one set during the First World War, and one during a time of religious persecution (sixteenth or seventeenth century) but the background or historical time period to the stories isn't clear, so inquisitive children may find this confusing. ( )