Frankie Best Hates Quests

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Instead, they have to stay with their grandad and Frankie is dreading it as they don’t know him very well. Frankie is twelve and all teen angst, glued to her phone, her brother is a geek and this cannot be happening. The chapters are short, there are diary entries, view points change, overall it is a light hearted adventure read and if you need to drop out of our world for a little while this is a fab one to enter. It's also a really good fantasy in it's own right, with fun, interesting world-building, some original ideas and good characters.

Answering all the important questions you never knew you had, like where fairytale characters go to the toilet, this book offers plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. A fun and funny adventure- with a narrator that frequently breaks the fourth wall - that deconstructs and gently mocks a lot of the classic quest fantasy tropes.It is an effective device that adds humour and occasional respite from a thrilling pace but, at times, it feels unnecessary and somewhat undermines the story – which is genuinely tense and dramatic. To have any chance of rescuing her grandfather, Frankie has to get up to speed, quickly, with all the rules and lore of the genre (luckily, Joel is usually on hand to help, in a very annoying way).

Joel is much more impressed with all of it than she is, even when they stumble across a secret door that seems to lead to another world. Then she finds a secret door in the bedroom which leads to the attic and then everything changes, Frankie doesn't like fantasy games because that is what her mum and dad produce and that was what her friends at school had picked on her about. Smith even cites the rules of the genre explicitly to readers, reminding them, for example, that every villain has a whole in their plan. She knows that there is nothing more important in life than being connected to your friends with WiFi and a smartphone, and she knows that little brothers who talk about orcs and goblins all the time are totally lame. With brilliant place names like Splendidness, Calmwater Bay and Fishsmelling-on-Sea, I hope there will be more adventures in Parallelia to come!Forget what you think you know about fairytales as ‘Frankie Best hates Quests’ turns that on its head. The content and ambition of the show remains the same: to give every pupil the opportunity to engage with authors and illustrators in their own classroom using the power of the internet. Frankie really doesn’t like Parallelia when she first steps into it, but her little brother Joel loves it so much! The bestselling author of Kid Normal delivers a hilarious, action-packed adventure in which Frankie must change her plans of watching YouTube and eating pot noodles for a rescue mission to save her kidnapped Grandad from a weird magical world.

Our list includes some of the world’s favourite authors, illustrators and licensed brands, such as Eric Carle, Helen Oxenbury, Nadia Shireen, The Snowman, Doctor Who, Roald Dahl, Tom Fletcher, Jeff Kinney, Rick Riordan, Robin Stevens, and Jacqueline Wilson to name but a few. We’ve re-named Puffin Virtually Live so that it’s easier for new teachers to discover it as part of Puffin Schools and to acknowledge that the show now premieres on show day, rather than being streamed live.Things get worse for Frankie as soon as they arrive and she realises there’s no phone signal and grandad has no wi-fi! Frankie did have big plans to watch YouTube and eat pot noodles that weekend but it looks like she'll just have to go on an epic mega-dangerous quest instead . This is the first middle grade book I’ve picked up for 24 years and even though I’m a lot older now I can honestly say I enjoyed every second of it.

Frankie did have big plans to watch YouTube and eat pot noodles that weekend but it looks like she'll just have to go on an epic mega-dangerous quest instead. When Grandad is kidnapped by a host of gnoblins (no that is not spelt incorrectly) it falls to Frankie and Joel to save the day. I particularly enjoyed Mrs Archer’s obsession with noodle pots and her favourite flavour ‘Mumbai Madman’. Frankie did have big plans to watch YouTube and eat pot noodles that weekend but it looks like she’ll just have to go on an epic mega-dangerous quest instead . Before they know it, Frankie and Joel find themselves embarking on a quest (it’s not a quest, Frankie hates quests) to rescue their grandad.Things take a turn for the worse when Grandad gets kidnapped by gnoblins (no, that is not spelt incorrectly) forcing Frankie to embark on a rescue mission across a magical realm filled with strange creatures, dangerous enemies and – worst of all – absolutely no WiFi. But Frankie's eyes are opened by a completely different world which leads to a massive adventure where they meet a vast mix of creatures and characters. I absolutely adored the subtle Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit nods scattered throughout the book specially the “second breakfast”. She provides a running commentary in the form of snide comments and scornful remarks that remind readers just how silly all this fantasy stuff is.