A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting – Mission to Monster Island

Joe Ballarini's Mission to Monster Island is a funny, spooky adventure for 10 year olds about a babysitter who fights monsters and still wants to get to the Valentine's dance.

What happens

Kelly Ferguson is a straight-A student with frizzy red hair and a secret. She's a member of the Order of the Babysitters, who protect children from the things under the bed. Her parents know now. They've agreed she can keep hunting monsters as long as her grades stay up.

Then Kevin turns up at school. Kevin used to be a boy. Now he's an eight-foot furry beast with twisted horns, changed on an island where monsters keep stolen children. He's sweet, he's clumsy and he's eaten every chicken nugget in the kitchen. The school goes into lockdown, Kelly takes the blame and she ends up suspended.

But Kevin has remembered something. A clue to where Monster Island might be. And Kelly promised the missing kids she'd bring them home.

It's a lovely mix of the everyday and the ridiculous. Kelly is fretting about whether her crush will ask her to the dance one minute and hiding a Sasquatch in the ceiling tiles the next. Her walkie-talkie team argue about when to say "over". Her dad offers to "whup any six-eyed sloth thing". There are monster fact files dotted through the story too, which your reader will probably love.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Chapter one opens with Kelly being trolled online, and the comments are nasty ("Die, Carrot Top, die"). There's a proper creepy babysitting job with twin girls and a talking doll. And the villains turn children into monsters, which could unsettle a younger or more anxious reader.

For a child who likes their scares with plenty of jokes, it's great fun. This isn't the first book about Kelly (there are earlier monster battles she mentions), but the story fills you in as it goes.

What to read next

If they're after another girl who hunts monsters around her homework, try Serwa Boateng's Guide to Vampire Hunting, which opens with Serwa's mum finally letting her train with a magic throwing axe.