Read The Bolds free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Julian Clary's The Bolds is a very silly story for 6 year olds about a family of laughing hyenas pretending to be people in a quiet corner of Teddington.
The narrator swears every word of it is true. (He once told his friends he was a sausage roll and they bit him on the leg, so he doesn't tell lies any more.)
It starts in Africa. Spot and Sue are two hyenas who've picked up English from the tourists at a safari camp. When an English couple called Fred and Amelia Bold come to a sticky end in a crocodile pond, the hyenas try on their clothes, pocket their passports and fly off to the couple's house at 41 Fairfield Road.
Being human turns out to be very hard work. Tails have to stay tucked away at all times. Hats hide the big ears. And nobody told them you have to pay for things in shops!
Fred ends up writing the jokes for Christmas crackers. Amelia sells hats made from egg boxes and old birds' nests. Then along come the twins, Bobby and Betty, who chew through their teacher's chair at break time (poor Mrs Millin).
The trouble is next door. Grumpy Mr McNumpty is up a ladder cleaning his windows on the day Betty's tail falls out of her costume. Fred tells him it was a feather duster. Will he swallow that?
It's a book that talks to your reader the whole way through. The narrator keeps asking them things. Can you sleep with your eyes open? Could you remember where you'd hidden ten thousand nuts? He also explains, very plainly, why hyenas rub their bottoms on bushes (Mr Bold just can't stop).
And there's so much laughing, because the Bolds can't stop laughing either. Mr Bold pokes his head through the hatch every evening with a joke, and every human rule they try to follow comes out slightly wrong.
The real Fred and Amelia are eaten by crocodiles in the very first chapter. It's quick and played for laughs (the hyenas bow their heads for a moment, then try on the shorts) but it's there. When money runs short, the Bolds also catch squirrels in the park for their tea.
Most children will take that as part of the joke. If yours is a worrier about animals, reading chapter one together will tell you straight away.
If they love the chatty bits, try Stick Dog next. Five stray dogs smell a barbecue in the park and spend the book plotting how to get a hamburger, with a narrator who talks to your reader just as much.
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