Charlie Small – The Final Showdown

Charlie Small's The Final Showdown is a race-for-home adventure for 7 year olds, and it begins with Charlie crouched behind a rock while something huge sniffs around a windy mountaintop.

What happens

It's the twelfth of Charlie's explorer's journals and the last in the run. He's been lost for years and years, and now he's got a map that shows the way back into his own world (it's the most precious thing he's ever owned). He's zooming along on a hover-scooter called the Air-rider. What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it happens! The something huge is a yeti, and he's VERY lonely. He feeds Charlie smoked meat and then won't let him leave. When Charlie hops about pretending he needs the loo, the yeti thinks it's the funniest thing ever. So Charlie has to do it again. And again. For hours.

Next comes a desert full of old bones and bushy spiders with a hundred hairy legs (their spit melts a sword). Then a flood turns the whole desert into a sea. Charlie washes up at Fortune City, where everybody has a sharp, ratty little face and is far too busy to help a starving boy.

Then it gets worse. Charlie's arch-enemy, Joseph Craik, turns up in a food shop. He wants that map so he can slip into our world and pull off the most daring robberies ever. Lucky, then, that a cheeky pickpocket called Snipe comes rattling down the hill in a wheelie bin!

Because it's Charlie's own journal, it feels like he's telling you everything straight after it's happened. He's terrified one minute and cracking jokes the next ("don't get your undies in a twist"). And when he rings home, Mum still says it all sounds wonderful and reminds him about the milk. That joke never gets old.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Craik is a properly nasty baddie. He twists Charlie's arm, threatens to snap it and fires his pistol at the two boys as they scramble up a fire escape (the bullets ping off the metal).

If guns make your reader uneasy, this one has a real edge to it. If they're already used to Charlie's scrapes, they'll probably be too busy cheering him on to worry.

What to read next

Charlie's mind goes right back to the start of his travels here, to the giant silverback gorilla who carried him off when it all began. If your reader is new to Charlie, start at the very beginning with Gorilla City, where a stormy afternoon on a homemade raft goes very wrong very fast.