Amelia Fang and the Lost Yeti Treasures

Laura Ellen Anderson's Amelia Fang and the Lost Yeti Treasures is a gloriously gross adventure for 7 year olds about a birthday party deep inside a mountain.

What happens

It's the winter holidays in the Kingdom of the Dark. Amelia, a young vampire, is spending the weekend at the Yeti Mountain Pits with her best friends. Florence's Grand-yeti Clemence is turning three hundred and fifty.

Yetis say hello by bumping bottoms. So that's three hundred and fifty bum bumps for the birthday girl! (Florence does five squats first, to get ready.)

The party food is wonderfully disgusting. Spider-leg sponge. Toe-jam pastries. Bowls of scabs. There's a fizzy drink called super-belch that floats you up to the ceiling, bottom first.

Prince Tangine has come too, glowing with a new glitter polish that smells of unicorn fart. Clemence decides his name is far too long and calls him Dave. It's very hard not to laugh.

But Amelia has a problem. She's also been invited to a pumpkin party the next night, and she keeps failing to tell Florence she'll have to leave early. Every time she tries, a yeti bursts into song or somebody burps.

Then odd things start happening. Something she can't see brushes past her leg in the tunnels. Tangine's tidy room is turned upside down. Glittery things go missing all over the pits, from a tiara to a shoe, and the notice board of missing things fills up fast.

And then the pit they were sleeping in falls in. Nobody's hurt, but the yetis are worried, and two unicorns turn up in trench coats saying they're detectives now.

The shouty yeti voices are all written in capitals, so reading this aloud is a joy (and a bit of a workout). Underneath the gross-out jokes the friendships are really sweet. Amelia's worry about letting a friend down will ring true for plenty of kids.

If your reader loves slime, silliness and a mystery that isn't too scary, this is a great pick.

What to read next

For another weekend of chaos with Amelia, Florence and Grimaldi, try Amelia Fang and the Naughty Caticorns, where there's a new baby on the way at the Fang Mansion.