Beatrice is nine. She wants to be a bus driver, which at her school is treated as roughly as strange as wanting to be a lamp post, and at home runs into her mum, who has strong views about which dreams are allowed.
What Beatrice has that nobody else in her class has is an imagination big enough to hear a Routemaster speak. That is the entrance requirement, and she meets it comfortably.
She is stubborn in the useful way: told that something is impossible, she treats it as a scheduling problem. Over three books she talks a telephone box out of a sulk, negotiates with the Mayor of London, gets herself captured by MI6 and arranges an exchange programme between a palace and a zoo. She is also, quietly, a very good friend.
