No Humans Allowed!

Madeleine Roux's No Humans Allowed is a funny monster-school adventure for 8 year olds about a girl in fake horns keeping a very big secret.

What happens

Zelli Stormclash goes to Dungeon Academy, where young monsters learn to guard dungeons and see off adventurers. Everyone thinks she's a minotaur, like the two minotaur mums who raised her. She isn't. She's a human, found as a baby in a basket in the reeds, and humans are the enemy here.

So she keeps her head down. Well, mostly. She has a habit of roaring at bullies (very loudly) when they pick on someone smaller.

Then, over a bowl of burnt porridge, she opens a library book about famous humans. There's a picture of a sword-swinging adventurer called Allidora Steelstrike, and she could be Zelli's twin. Same black curls, same fierce look, nearly the same name.

That afternoon Zelli overhears the dean. The oldest students were sent off to frighten a nearby village and haven't come back. And Allidora has been seen in the area.

Zelli wants answers, and she wants to get them alone. Three new hangers-on have other ideas. Hugo is a huge owlbear who won't eat meat. Bauble is a mimic who can turn into a music box or a quill, but never anything dangerous. Snabla is a kobold with a homemade shield who swears his cousin is a dragon (nobody believes him).

The fun of it is how upside down everything is. At this school kindness is against the rules. Help someone pick up their dropped homework and you're in trouble. Compliment a goblin on their sweater vest? Detention! And detention is held on a swaying platform hung over a pool of lava.

Underneath the jokes there's a real ache. Zelli calls herself a nobody. She loves her mums, but she doesn't know where she belongs, and that picture knocks her sideways. If your reader has ever felt like the odd one out, they'll get it straight away.

It's not a scary read. There are bullies, some gruesome jokes about what adventurers do to monsters, and a nasty slip on a rope in the dark. Mostly it's mischief.

What to read next

If they love a girl who won't be what her school expects, try Grilled Cheese and Dragons. Princess Pulverizer is meant to be learning tea-party manners, and she'd far rather be at Knight School with a sword.