Wizarding For Beginners

• Wizarding for Beginners, by Elys Dolan
• Number of Pages: 203
• Cool Words: glossy, trotted, flagrant 
• German Words: Dummkopfe (stupid), Schnell (quick), Unterhose (underwear), Ja (yes), mein Hintern (my bottom)

This book is pretty difficult to read because some of the words are in German. I already knew some of the words because my mom is part German, but the people who don’t know German will find it a bit tricky since Albrecht uses a lot of German words. 

The story is pretty exciting. There is an annoying mirror that keeps telling the monster which is very very friendly, that it’s hair is awful. That makes the monster feel bad. It made me furious. I would frown at him and he’s lucky it’s just a frown! I think the mirror is a boy, because every time I read about the mirror it feels like its a boy.

The mirror is actually not really important in the story. The important characters in the story are Dave, Albrecht, Terrence the Terrible and Brain (I call him Brain, but his actual name is Belinda because he is only pretending to be a boy so she can be a wizard). Oh and there is also a beast that is important. I like the friendly beast (most beasts aren’t friendly). 

The story is also pretty funny and mysterious. There are parts that are sad, like when Terrence tries to cook Albrecht (he is a goat). Terrence is cooking him so that the tiger can eat him. Darcy in my class also likes to pretend to cook people and Heather has a toy tiger that says “Raaaar!”. 

Actually Wizarding for Beginners is a bit complicated because there are loads of different characters and loads of languages. I also didn’t like the illustrations so much. They have too much going on. Mrs Szczypka, my photography teacher, says to only take pictures on a grey surface or a gold surface or just a really plain surface so that there isn’t too much going on. Because if there is too much going on, people don’t focus on the main thing.

I would recommend this book to 10-year olds that are studying German. I think its not really good for 6-year olds.