One of the lovely things about teaching very small groups is that the students are able to choose from many different books to read during lessons. Having so far read War Horse and Mr Stink my Year 9s have chosen Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak as their next read.

I tried to read this whilst training in 2003 but did not get much beyond the first few pages. I found the short sentences and ridiculously liberal use of the exclamation mark faintly un-nerving. However, having read it to check its suitability for the group, I realised it's actually quite good. Very fast-moving, lots of extremely strange and interesting characters, heavy on plot and light on character development. Eleven books in the series. It's a boy thing, but the one girl in the group and I are rather enjoying ourselves!