The cover is good, bright, breezy, full of action with all the main characters enjoying themselves. It has all the right ingredients for the 7 to 12 age group target readers. The school bully is thwarted, the messages are theft is bad, bullying is bad, honesty good, family life is good. Most children seem to like magic powers and tricks, and Max, the hero, gains great powers accidentally, and the use of these powers (including being able to have conversations with their pet dog) is the theme of the book. The reservations that I have about this book are that it is London-centric. You have to accept the rhyming slang and the use of slang words, like "dunno" etc. The first third of the book seems to be written by someone different to the rest of it. I'm not sure about the inclusion of the worms, gangsters, and knives and extortion. Although a youngster having magic powers is imaginative, and acceptable, I'm not sure that any 12 year old could see himself running a stall on a market and handling the money. As I said at the start, the book has the right ingredients but I am unsure whether the final cake is quite what it should be, or could be.

Max Magic follows a boy named Max who loves magic and impressing all his family and friends with his tricks but he has some bullies who aren't so impressed both at school and at his dads market stall so he decides he needs to work out how to get them off his back. I like the sound of this book and was intrigued by Stephen Mulhern's input in the book but unfortunately I found it was very basic and both the plot and writing style were lacking and I didn't think much of the illustrations either! I know I am not the target audience for the book as an adult but I have read and enjoyed many books for children of this age. With my most favourite author of this age being Sam Copeland (who fills his books with humour and twists and turns and brilliant action packed illustrations), I felt that this showed how lacking this book is in every area! It was nice we got to see Max enjoying his hobby and how he wasn't willing to give up and I'm sure young children will love reading about the magic but it wasn't integrated very seamlessly into the story and at times felt like it was there for the sake of it. I don't like how he solely used magic to defeat the bullies either as whilst it's a fun read it doesn't help children know what to do with any bullies that may be in their life. The illustrations were very disappointing. There are very few throughout the book which is a shame as magic could be so much fun to play around with and add some extra excitement to the story however most of the illustrations were just characters not doing anything, just standing there either holding something or looking at someone. Where's all the magic?! I think the idea for this book was good but it just wasn't done very well based on other books of this age I've read. It was very average and other than fun there is no real point to the story. I much prefer stories that are fun and you can learn from the characters situation at the same time and this book didn't achieve that in my opinion. At least not in a realistic way unless you have magical skills to defeat bullies with too!

this is the book I would choose for my nephew. Why? Because it is fun, not too difficult to read and get into and it seems like something he would enjoy and have a laugh about when he reads it. The animated illustrations and title only further this opinion that the book is child-friendly and relatable to his aged demographic (5-10 years old) I think it would be a good starter book to get him interested in reading as he is not a heavy reader as of yet. What better way to get a child to read than to find a book relatable to them and full of comedy? Of course, if I was thinking of purchasing this book for myself, it would not be appropriate as I read longer books with more plots and ideas involved. However I would definitely recommend this for little boys, as well as some little girls interested in starting to read.