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Charlie Small's Land of the Remotosaurs is a dinosaur-packed explorer's journal for 7 year olds, and it opens just after a T-Rex has licked Charlie like an ice cream.
This is the tenth of his journals to turn up. Charlie is an eight-year-old explorer who's been trying to get home for over four hundred years (yes, really). His mum still expects him back in time for tea.
This time he wakes up in what looks like a school changing room, high up a cliff. Below is a jungle of giant trees, ringed by cliffs that turn out to be metal. And when he climbs the tallest tree he bumps his head on the sky!
Rainbow-coloured birds with saw-toothed beaks turn out to be after his blood. Then a huge face looms over the jungle and booms that he has to play the game. So who's watching him through all those tiny cameras in the trees?
His new friend is Spriggot. He's a forest sprite about the size of a garden gnome, and he is SO grumpy. Don't call him an elf! He nurses Charlie better with a medicine that tastes hairy (there's a spider's leg in it) and grumbles about pretty much everything.
The title gives a bit of the secret away. These dinosaurs are remote-controlled, and somebody is having a very dangerous game with them. Charlie finds the rules on a muddy map, with points on offer for every Pig Trooper knocked out.
It's written as Charlie's diary, so you get every "Yikes!" and "Phew!" as it happens. When he rings Mum, she thinks it all sounds wonderful and asks him to grab a pint of milk on the way home. It's very funny and a tiny bit sad at the same time.
There's lots of dinosaur fighting, and two raptors bring down a Triceratops in a proper battle (it turns out to be a machine full of wires, not blood). The villain also zaps Spriggot's loyal raven, Darkness, with a ray gun, and that's a sad moment.
If your reader gets very attached to animal sidekicks, they might want you close by for that bit. For a dinosaur fan who likes a fright with their jokes, this is brilliant fun.
Charlie straps on a holster here and reckons he looks as cool as Wild Bob Ffrance with his six-shooters. If your reader wants to meet the outlaw himself, he's waiting in The Daredevil Desperados of Destiny. And if this is their first Charlie Small, the whole journey starts in Gorilla City.
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