Attack of the Meteor Monsters

Chris Priestley's Attack of the Meteor Monsters is a daft, gloomy school comedy for 9 year olds in which something falls out of the sky and nobody believes the two boys who saw it.

What happens

Mildew and Sponge are wheezing at the top of a hill on a dawn run when a ball of fire roars out of the clouds. It smashes into the next peak along. Something glows. Something creeps off down the hillside (probably sheep, says Mildew, although it doesn't look much like sheep).

Back at Maudlin Towers, the other boys don't believe a word of it. Then things get even stranger. A party of schoolgirls turns up with a headmistress who clanks and wheezes as she talks, claiming their horse exploded. One girl says her name is Milk. Her friend looks round in a panic and decides she's called Spoon.

For the boys of Maudlin Towers, girls are almost more alarming than meteors!

When Mildew and Sponge climb up to take a proper look, the thing in the peat isn't a rock at all. It clangs when you knock on it and it has a hatch. Before long two enormous mechanical spiders arrive with a very unfriendly offer. Hand over some runaway aliens within six hours or the whole planet gets vaporised.

The joy of these books is that the two friends talk and talk and talk. They bicker like an old married couple and call each other "old kipper" and "old sprout". Sponge says "biscuit" when he can't think of anything else to say, and he keeps a bag of them on him for emergencies. Who wouldn't want a friend like that?

The jokes are very dry and very silly. A boy who's just been told they could all have been killed looks them up and down and says he's never seen two people less scathed. The teachers are gloriously strange too. The English teacher has had her window boarded up, and now she gazes tragically at the planks instead of the moors.

This isn't Mildew and Sponge's first adventure. They mention Vikings, werewolves and pirates from earlier books, but the story makes sense on its own and the running jokes are easy to pick up.

Does your reader like their comedy deadpan and their school buildings covered in gargoyles? Then this is a treat. There's a creepy old school and a proper mystery, but it's much more giggles than shivers.

What to read next

For an earlier Mildew and Sponge adventure, try Curse of the Werewolf Boy. A stolen School Spoon and a man in a winged helmet running along the ditch by the sports field turn the pair into detectives.