Funny Kid: Spookytime by Matt Stanton

Max is a trickster and a joker, a true funny kid, and he claims that scary movies don’t really scare him, but his classmates do not believe him. A class assignment gives him the opportunity of making his own scary movie to demonstrate that he knows how scary movies work. With his friend Hugo they plan to prank and scare his first-time babysitter and film the action. Unfortunately for Max things get complicated when his arch-nemesis Abby also turns up and before he knows it he too becomes a little on edge.

This book is just plain fun! Spookytime includes lots of delightful kid-friendly humour and moments of ridiculous and quirky antics. With slime monsters, ‘ghosts’ and unexplained things that make unexpected noises, a ‘duckenstein’ and a baby that goes missing, the troubles slowly escalate and make Max a little bit scared.  The delight of this book is that there is always an underlying sense of the absurd and it is genuinely funny.  Readers aged 8-12 will have a laugh while reading this book and will probably recommend it to their friends.

Themes: Humour, Scary movies, Pranks.

Carolyn Hull