The dragon in the library by Louie Stowell

Nosy Crow, 2019. 224pp., pbk. ISBN: 9781788000260.
Kit can't stand reading. She'd much rather be outside, playing games and getting muddy, than stuck inside being quiet with a book. But when she's dragged along to the local library at the start of the school holiday by her two best friends, she makes an incredible discovery: the local library is run by wizards . . . and she's one too! The youngest wizard ever, in fact.
But someone is threatening to tear down the library and disturb the powerful magical forces living beneath it. And now it's up to Kit and her friends to save the library . . . and the world.
The first book in an exciting, imaginative and brilliantly funny new series, which Miss 8 curled up with on Christmas afternoon when it was too hot to be outside. Full of illustrations and written in short manageable chapters, it is a fast-paced story with the perfect mix of reality and fantasy to capture her imagination. It also captured mine and it sheds a new light on the value of both libraries and reading for those who think neither has anything of value for them.
This is the perfect book to recommend to teachers as the first read-aloud for the new school year to encourage students to investigate the magic in your school library.
Barbara Braxton