A Monster Ate My Packed Lunch!

A Monster Ate My Packed Lunch! by Pamela Butchart is a very silly school trip story for 7 year olds who like their adventures loud, spooky and full of screaming.

What happens

Izzy's class have been allowed on another school trip, which is immediately SUSPICIOUS. The last one ended with Miss Jones shouting "NEVER AGAIN!" and running off the bus.

This time it's a lake. Jodi gets a weird feeling about it before they've even arrived.

Things do start well. The teachers find out the lodges have hot tubs and go a bit wild. Gary Petrie finds a robe and slippers in his room and decides he is now a man of luxury.

Then Ranger Tam takes them into the woods after dark for a nature walk. He asks if they know the Legend of the Lake. He says she's back, he saw her last week with his own eyes, and he reckons she's even bigger than before.

After that it's banshees. And a sign by the water that turns out to be an anagram.

Izzy tells the whole thing herself and she's great company. Everything is in CAPITALS because everything is an emergency. You get her running commentary on the teachers, on Gary's midge bites (he counts them out loud) and on exactly what Jodi's face is doing.

This gang have history as well. Izzy mentions the time their teachers turned out to be vampire rats, and the time the shepherd's pie was poison, like it's all perfectly normal. That's a big part of the fun.

Small things tell you a lot about these friends. Maisie faints when she's frightened, so Zach carries a carton of Ribena everywhere they go. Nobody makes a thing of it. They just hand it over.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There are wailing ghosts in the woods, a monster said to have been in the lake for over a hundred years, and the lights going out in the middle of dinner. Ranger Tam does a VERY convincing serious face.

The frights in these opening chapters always have a joke right behind them, and the children are mostly scaring themselves. If ghost talk keeps your child awake, this could still be a bit much. If they love being scared and then laughing about it, they'll be delighted.

If you've got a reader who shouts bits of a book at you from the other room, this is built for exactly that.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, The Phantom Lollipop Man is in the library too. Same Izzy, same best friends, and a lollipop man who disappears and might have come back as a cold white cloud drifting round the school.