Q 01/05

Which Jenny Nimmo novel opens the Children of the Red King series, sending a ten-year-old to a sinister boarding school?

A) The Castle of Mirrors

B) Midnight for Charlie Bone

C) Charlie Bone and the Wilderness Wolf

D) Charlie Bone and the Beast

Answer · why

B) Midnight for Charlie Bone

Midnight for Charlie Bone reached Britain in 2002 and America a year later. Charlie's hostile grandmother and her three sisters pack him off to Bloor'...

Q 02/05

Critics kept comparing Jenny Nimmo's Charlie Bone books, set at a school for magical children, to which series?

A) Harry Potter

B) Artemis Fowl

C) Percy Jackson

D) The Worst Witch

Answer · why

A) Harry Potter

Harry Potter loomed over the first book: Kirkus called it a placeholder for the next instalment, and Publishers Weekly likened Bloor's Academy to Hogw...

Q 03/05

Ten-year-old Charlie Bone learns he is endowed when he starts hearing voices coming from which everyday objects?

A) Hand mirrors

B) Gramophones

C) Photographs

D) Grandfather clocks

Answer · why

C) Photographs

Photographs talk to Charlie: the first shows a couple with a baby and a cat. His gift later extends to paintings, and he even travels through one.

Q 04/05

Which household objects explode whenever Charlie Bone's Uncle Paton comes too close, keeping him indoors until dark?

A) Window panes

B) Wall clocks

C) Wine glasses

D) Light bulbs

Answer · why

D) Light bulbs

Light bulbs burst around Paton because his endowment boosts electricity. He walks only at night, for fear of blowing out shop lights and traffic signa...

Q 05/05

Which sinister endowment makes head boy Manfred Bloor so feared in the Charlie Bone series?

A) Hypnotism

B) Mind reading

C) Invisibility

D) Ventriloquism

Answer · why

A) Hypnotism

Hypnotism is Manfred's weapon: he held Emma Tolly in a trance for eight years, and he wiped the memory of Charlie's father the same way.