Reviewed By Amelia Vahtrick, Kids Buzz Editor

In this collection you will find stories, recipes, cartoons and poems by such authors as J.K. Rowling, Garth Nix, Stephanie Alexander, Morris Gleitzman and Shaun Tan. Bed time stories, comics to make you laugh, recipes to try...this book has something for everyone, plus with each copy you buy, you are helping to raise money for War Child, an aid organisation which helps children all over the world who have been affected by war. So what are you waiting for?

Jessica Adams

Lost Inside the Internet, by Matthew Wilde (as told to Jessica Adams)

I am staring at my glow-in-the-dark alarm clock when I realise I'm going to lose all my races at the Autumn School Swimming Championships. It's now 5.42 a.m. exactly and the Championships start at 10 a.m. – but no matter how hard I try, I can't get back to sleep. Meanwhile I can see Fantastic Jack Maxwell next door, swimming one lap after another in his pool. With every lap I count, I know he's beating his fastest times from last summer.

I know all Fantastic Jack's swimming times off by heart. He beat me in the 200 metre backstroke by four seconds at the last London School Swimming Championships and this morning he's just taken off eight more seconds.

Jack Maxwell is taller than me, tougher than me and he also has huge feet – the kind that work like flippers in the water. Jack's parents are also rich. They bought the house next door to ours and the one next door to that, and knocked the wall between the gardens down, just so they could build a big heated swimming pool for Jack to train in. The pool has glass walls around it, so you can see in, and a big glass roof. We don't even have our own swimming pool. We're not rich like the Fantastic Maxwells. Even our bath is too small.

I stick my feet out from under the blankets and wiggle them. They're far too small as well. Whatever made me think I had a chance of beating Jack Maxwell in the Championships?

He's been getting up at 5 a.m. to train in his swimming pool every morning this week. Even with my bedroom curtains drawn, the floodlights around his pool still wake me up. And then there's the screeching noise his mother Mrs Maxwell makes, when she uses her megaphone to coach him.

Now Mr Maxwell is out there too. While Mrs Maxwell screams into the megaphone – 'GO JACK, GO!' – he runs up and down by the side of the pool, waving his arms around. He is wearing his special dressing gown this morning. The whole Maxwell family have them. The gowns are white and fluffy, and have 'Team Maxwell' embroidered on the back, in gold letters. They wear white fluffy slippers too. And they even have a white fluffy cat. His name is Prince and he's always beating our cat up.

As my sister Hannah says, you can try as hard as you like, but you just can't beat the Fantastic Maxwells.

I squash my pillow around my ears and try to go back to sleep. I'm still wide awake, though, with that sick, horrible, nervous feeling that I always get before a big race.

I wish I wasn't the best swimmer at our school. I'd much rather be like Hannah. She's my twin sister. She's not good at anything in particular. (Except snoring – I can hear her now, in the next bedroom.) We might be twins, but we couldn't be more different.

Then Mr and Mrs Maxwell screech 'YEAAH!', as Jack finishes the last centimetre of his 200 metre swim, touching the wall with his long fingers. I don't even have to look out of the bedroom window to know he's just broken his record from last summer.

I get up and go to the kitchen to get a glass of milk. Hannah is still snoring, with her bedroom door open, so I shut it. Her friend Sydney stayed last night. She's got the fold-out bed. I'm surprised Hannah hasn't woken Sydney up – but she's fast asleep, upside-down on the bed, with her feet on the pillow and her head almost hanging over the end.

Sydney is from Australia. Her family moved to London last year because of her dad's job, and she's the newest girl in our class. Australia is the only country in the world that's upside-down, according to my dad, which might explain why everything Sydney does is the wrong way round. Even her hair isn't normal. Most girls have hair that grows down. Hers grows up, like watercress.

Sydney is staying again tonight because she and Hannah want to have a swap party after the swimming championships are over. All their friends are coming over to our house so they can swap all the things they don't want for things they do want.

There's just one problem. Dad doesn't know. And because Hannah and Sydney got into trouble at school for having a swap party in the lunch-break once, it's been banned at home as well.

I've been sworn to secrecy, of course, so there's nothing I can do. The last time I told Dad what was going on with Hannah and Sydney (they were planning to dye each other's hair with purple hair spray), I got into so much trouble with Hannah that I wished I'd never said anything at all.

She slammed doors in my face when nobody was looking. She took the last of the nice breakfast cereal and left me with the stale stuff. She put chewing gum inside my shoes, and she put my school bag up a tree. She even poured glitter into my bed. I know she's my twin, but sometimes my sister can be the Queen of Mean.

When they had the swap party at school, Sydney and Hannah made people pay extra money for a swap if they thought the thing they were exchanging wasn't good enough.

That's how they got into trouble. Someone tried to swap a stale old Easter egg for one of Hannah's yo-yos, so Hannah asked for some money as well. And that's when one of the teachers found out, and they were sent straight to the Head's office.

Now Sydney is snoring too. I can hear both of them, all the way from the landing, down the stairs and into the kitchen. Hannah makes a 'Haaarrgh' sound and Sydney makes a 'Wheeeee' sound. They're even wearing each other's pyjamas. Or at least, Sydney is wearing Hannah's old pyjamas, because they swapped them a few weeks ago. Sometimes, they have so many swap parties together that they finish the year with exactly the same things they swapped at the start of the year – and they don't even remember.

If they get caught having a swap party tonight, though, they'll be in serious trouble. That could mean no more pocket money for Hannah – and she'd hate that. Even worse, Dad might stop Sydney from coming to stay, and then my sister would be in a bad mood for the rest of the year.

Everybody at school likes Hannah – she was class captain last year. They don't know what she's like at home, though. Especially when she's in trouble with my dad.

I am pouring a glass of milk in the kitchen when I hear our cat Ginger, mewing. It sounds muffled, as if he's trapped somewhere. In the end I find him stuck in Dad's office. He likes to sleep near the computer (and sometimes on top of it) because it's warm. Then Dad forgets that he's in there, and shuts the door. When I let him out, though, I notice that Dad's computer is still on.

He normally switches it off last thing at night, but it looks as though the internet is still working. There's our school website, anyway – Kings Park Community School.

Hannah and Sydney must have been looking at it before they went to bed. Everyone in our class has been making their own webpage on the school site this term. I check Sydney's page, which is decorated with her name at the top in big pink and purple letters, and then I read her blog.

December 1st. Today there are twenty-four more days until Christmas. Yuck. I can't wait for it to be over!

That's so typical of Sydney. Everyone else is really looking forward to Christmas, and all their presents, and the turkey and Christmas pudding. Meanwhile she can't wait for it to end. Everything she does is upside-down, or the wrong way round.

Hannah's webpage has a big photo of her in her yellow-and-black school uniform. Everyone at Kings Park School thinks the uniform makes us look like bees. Maybe it's true. We wear a black jacket, yellow shirt, black pants, and in winter, a yellow-and-black striped scarf. I must admit, that photo of Hannah does make her look a bit like a giant bee. Not that I'd ever tell her that of course . . .

I don't even want to look at my webpage. I didn't have time to finish it last week because everyone else was hogging the computer. So although my name is up there, the rest of it is a mess. We were supposed to put up photographs and videos of our favourite things, but all I had time to do was find a picture of an Egyptian mummy and a dinosaur, then make a Top Ten list.

I already want to change my mind about the Top Ten. Why did I put Ginger, our cat, and Brindle, our dog, at Number One and Number Two? After that I've put down Guinness World Records (my favourite book) and Wikipedia (my favourite website). The writing on the webpage is far too big, though, and I can already see I've made a spelling mistake.

I suppose I should put swimming and diving on there too. They're two of my favourite things. Or they were, until the school swimming coach started making me enter competitions against Jack Maxwell.

I wonder if Fantastic Jack is still doing laps, or if Mr and Mrs Maxwell have let him go inside for some breakfast? I'm feeling really tired now. All I want to do is go back to bed, but I know I'll only have to wake up again in an hour or two.

I try to shut down the computer, but it won't turn off. Instead, a strange green light appears on the screen – so bright that it fills the whole room. What?

Then the green light changes to orange, then blue, then finally white. I can hardly look at it, it's so bright.

Suddenly a photograph of my mum appears on the computer. Or is it a video? It might be a video, because she seems to be moving around on the screen.

It must be something Hannah put on her webpage. Then . . .

'Matthew, are you there?' I hear Mum ask. And this time she's definitely moving around on the computer screen, because I can see her smiling and waving.

I don't know what to say. This must be a dream. My mother died in a fire, in our caravan, when I was little. We only have one video of her, and it was taken during a summer holiday in France. I've seen it dozens of times and so has Hannah. In that video, she's wearing a big sunhat, a pair of sunglasses and a top with blue flowers all over it.

On the computer screen now, though, she's wearing a winter coat, a big scarf, a woolly hat and gloves. She looks a bit like the old photos and video we have of her – but her hair is different, as well. It looks shorter.

'Matthew, it's Mum,' she says, in a loud, clear voice. 'Can you hear me?'

This is definitely a dream. Maybe if I switch the computer off and go back to bed, I'll wake up again in an hour or two, and everything will be back to normal.

I rub my eyes, put the computer on 'Hibernate' so it will be ready later in the morning, and shut the door. But then I hear Mum again, yelling through the wall.

'Remember to aim for the fastest rotating part of the earth, Matthew!'

What?

'Matthew, when it all starts happening, try to go towards the fastest rotating part of the earth!'

When what all starts happening? That's it. I've had enough. I'm going to bed now, and I'm going to drink this big glass of milk in a rush, so it makes me instantly sleepy. Maybe I've been sleepwalking the whole time. Maybe even the cat wasn't real.

I tiptoe past Hannah's bedroom but I needn't bother. Nothing would wake her up now. She and Sydney are still snoring, with their mouths wide open. They wouldn't even know if an elephant had just crashed through the roof.

Then, suddenly, Sydney wakes up. Her hair is sticking up more than usual. She looks like she's just had an electric shock.

'Hey!' she shines her torch at me. 'Matthew! What are you doing?'

'I couldn't sleep. Jack was swimming next door and they had all the floodlights on. It woke me up.'

Sydney pulls a face. She doesn't like Fantastic Jack either.

'He must really want to win if he's training so early,' she yawns. 'How silly. I'd rather be asleep.'

'Sydney. Listen to me. I just had a really weird dream,' I tell her.

'What happened?'

'I'm not sure. I went downstairs to get a glass of milk, and then I heard Ginger miaowing because he was stuck in Dad's office. So I went in there, and the computer was still on. I tried to switch it off, but it turned bright green. And then I saw Mum. She was talking to me, as if she were still alive.'

'Wow!' Sydney whispers. 'Maybe you saw her ghost.'

'What? I don't believe in ghosts!'

Sydney yawns again, and then swings herself around on the fold-out bed, so that her head is now back on the pillow, and her feet are at the end. I can see she's painted her toenails with red felt-tip pen again. She and Hannah are always doing that.

'Have you decided if you're coming to the Year Seven Christmas party with me?' she asks.

Oh no. I thought Sydney had forgotten all about that. She asked me ages ago, in front of loads of people, and I was so embarrassed that I just walked away. I'm not even sure that I want to go to the Christmas party. I don't like dancing. And I'm not sure I want go with Sydney anyway. She's my sister's friend. And she's really weird.

'I have to go back to bed,' I tell her. 'I've got to get some sleep before the championships.'

'I hope you win,' Sydney whispers.

'I hope so too. But I think Jack's going to win everything this year,' I tell her.

I go back to bed, looking out of the window one last time to see if Jack is still there. The big, blue swimming pool is empty, though – and there is no sign of Mr and Mrs Maxwell. Or their silly fluffy cat.

Even one more hour of sleep might give me some energy. It's worth a try anyway.

Have you ever been so tired that you feel yourself falling as soon as your head is on the pillow? I am lying on my side, with one arm on top of the blankets, and one arm under the blankets, when I feel myself starting to crash.

And that's when I see her again. My mum. Looking just the way she did on the computer. She is sitting on the end of my bed, smiling at me, still wearing her coat, scarf and hat. 'Don't be frightened, Matthew,' she says. 'It's really me. I've just come for a talk, if that's all right.'

'I suppose so,' I hear myself saying. It's funny looking at my mother, when I've never really known her. I was exactly one year and two months old when our caravan caught fire. We were living in Glastonbury, then, in a wood. My dad was in town with Hannah, and I was in the caravan with Mum. They say the fire started because an oil lamp fell over. I was too young to know anything. But when they found me, Mum had taken me to the river. She had collapsed there, and by the time they took her to hospital in an ambulance, it was too late. She was dead.

Right now, sitting on the end of my bed, my mum couldn't seem any more alive . . .

'Try to remember what I said about going towards the fastest rotating part of the earth.'

'But why? How? Where is it anyway?'

'Matthew,' my mum leans forward. 'There's going to be an accident tomorrow. At the swimming championships. I wasn't supposed to tell you that bit. Sorry.'

'What kind of accident?'

'It doesn't matter. But when it happens, I want you to find this very fast-moving circle. Go towards that, and another circle will open up. Go towards that, and you'll be able to go through a lot more circles. Go through them, the same way you'd go through a hoop, or a tunnel.'

'But why?'

'I can't tell you.'

I stare at her. She looks a little like Hannah and a little like me. Both of us have Dad's red hair and freckles, but now I can see that we have Mum's small, pointy nose as well. And her ears stick out. Just like ours.

'I thought you were dead, Mum. Are you a ghost?'

She laughs. 'Well, do I seem dead? There's no such word as 'dead', Matthew. That's one of the things you're going to find out.'

'Find out when?'

'A bit later. I can't explain now. Just promise me you'll find the . . .'

'Yes, I know. The fastest rotating part of the earth. And then what?'

'Go straight through it, and out the other side. That will get you safely out of the internet.'

'What do you mean, that will get me out of the internet?'

'I don't want you to get lost there, that's all. There are far too many of us stuck in here as it is ...'

ISBN: 9780143304456
ISBN-10: 0143304453
Audience: Children
For Ages: 5 - 6 years old
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 480
Published: October 2009
Dimensions (cm): 19.8 x 12.9  x 3.700
Weight (kg): 19.6