Hello! My name is Sophie Briggs. I live with my mum and my dad and Pete. Pete’s younger than me, and if you’ve got a little brother you’ll know how very, VERY annoying they can be. When he spilled orange juice all over Mum’s not-very-new-but-she-still-loved-it coat, she said it was MY fault, because if I hadn’t shouted at him he wouldn’t have run down the hall and tripped.

I bet you’d have shouted at Pete too, though. He’d drawn aeroplanes all over the cover of my special notebook. It’s lucky he can’t read properly because – and PLEASE don’t tell anyone! – that’s the notebook where I write down everything I’ve learned after a day at Stargirl Academy. It’s TOTALLY secret and I’ve promised not to tell anybody about what we do.

The Academy used to be The Cloudy Towers Academy for Fairy Godmothers (I am NOT joking!) but then they decided that Fairy Godmothers were a bit old-fashioned, and now they teach girls to be Stargirls instead. We learn magic and spells so we can help people – really, truly help them. I don’t think they’d ever let me use a spell to turn Pete into a frog, for instance. Well, not unless it would help him jump.

Actually, I think Pete might rather like being a frog – he’s always bursting with energy. They closed the play park at the end of our road so I couldn’t take him there any more, and that made him bouncier than ever. We haven’t got a garden, so there’s nowhere for him to pretend to be an aeroplane, which is what he likes best. When he tries to do it at home in our flat it drives us nuts.

Everyone round here is fed up that the park is shut. It was the only green space we had. It’s dreadful without it, and I made a promise to myself the very first day I went to The Academy that if ever it was my turn to choose who to help it would be everyone in Greenberry Street!

Love Sophie