Beetle Queen

M. G. Leonard's Beetle Queen is a gross, gripping beetle adventure for 10 year olds with one of the creepiest villains around.

What happens

Lucretia Cutter is a famous fashion designer with a secret. Under the lab coat, the wig and the big sunglasses, she has beetle legs and beetle eyes. She likes to hang from the ceiling.

This is the second Beetle Boy book, and it gets going fast. Lucretia has made a dazzling white dress for a Hollywood star's big night. It's made of beetles. Thousands of them. And they're alive.

Meanwhile Darkus is back at Uncle Max's flat, eating his dad's Pop-Pop pie with his best friends Virginia and Bertolt. He can't wait to show Dad the mountain of clever beetles hiding in the sewer. Dad's reaction is not what he hoped for (to put it mildly).

Soon there are yellow ladybird spies everywhere. Two very nasty cousins have just been let out of prison and want revenge. And Darkus has been made to promise to stay away from Lucretia Cutter. Do you think he'll manage it?

The beetles are the real stars. There's Baxter, a rhinoceros beetle who nods his horn, a frog-legged leaf beetle who hides in Virginia's plaits and a firefly the size of a golf ball. The beetle disco in the sewer is brilliant, with fireflies making a spinning glitter ball!

The real science is folded in too. Your reader will come away knowing which beetle is whiter than any paper people can make.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This one has some properly dark moments. Lucretia punishes her own daughter, Novak, by locking her in a cell with biting bugs for a week. The two cousins talk openly about killing Darkus, and he's still healing from a bullet wound. His mum's death is part of his story too. It sits right at the top of this shelf for a reason.

For a reader who can handle a real villain, it's thrilling. And the three friends, with all their teasing and loyalty, hold it all together.

What to read next

If it's the nature-loving hero they like, M. G. Leonard also wrote Twitch. It's about a boy who loves birds so much he takes on four bullies to save a pigeon.