Dr Critchlore’s School for Minions

Sheila Grau's Dr Critchlore's School for Minions is a daft, monster-stuffed comedy for 8 year olds, set at a boarding school that trains henchmen for evil overlords.

What happens

Runt Higgins is a werewolf. He has been at Dr Critchlore's for two years, training to be a minion for an Evil Overlord, because that is what the school does. Ogres go to the Dormitory for Minions of Impressive Size, which has stone griffins and no front door. Monsters go to the Monster Minion Dormitory. Runt keeps being put in the Dormitory for Human Minions, a shabby wooden thing next door with the motto Just Do Your Best over the entrance.

That joke never stops being funny. Classes include History of Henchmen and Introduction to Explosives. Last year Runt took There's No Excuse for Cowardice. His roommate Darthin failed it.

Darthin is painting himself grey and gluing on horns, because mad scientists apparently prefer a gargoyle assistant. Their other roommate, Frankie, is Dr Frankenhammer's twenty-fifth attempt at a superhuman, and he twiddles the bolts in his neck whenever he is nervous, which is always.

Runt was left here as a baby himself. He was the runt of his wolf pack and could not keep up, so his family found him somewhere safe and carried on without him. He still wears their medallion. He talks about missing the noise of them in a way that is very matter of fact and quite sad.

Then a video goes round of Critchlore graduates running away from their attackers, and the school's reputation starts to slide.

Here is the bit that will decide it for some readers. Frankie panics, lets go of the top of his head and it pops off, rolls under the bed and leaves his body racing round the room with blood spraying at the ceiling. His friends catch him, switch off his blood pump and screw him back together. It is written as slapstick, the way a falling anvil is slapstick, and he is perfectly fine afterwards. But it is properly gory slapstick and it turns up in the opening chapter.

If that gets a laugh rather than a wince, the rest is easy going. It is silly, quick, and full of straight-faced detail about how evil overlords run their countries and why their students are so keen to go home.

What to read next

If they're after another child left somewhere enormous and strange, Goblins in the Castle is on the shelf here as well. William was found as a baby on the drawbridge of Toad-in-a-Cage Castle, and he knows every secret passage in it except whatever is locked away in the North Tower.