Girl Underground

Girl Underground is Morris Gleitzman being funny and furious at once, an Australian story for 9 year olds narrated by a girl whose parents are lovely, and also crooks.

What happens

Bridget is starting at a very posh boarding school. Marble floors. Oil paintings of dead prime ministers. Her Uncle Grub is stroking a vase and eyeing up a photocopier that is not chained to anything.

She does not want to be there. Mum cancelled the surgery on her tattoos to pay the fees. Dad presses a Bulgarian gameboy into a teacher's hand and promises him an Iraqi blender next visit.

Her big brother is inside for shoplifting. If anybody at this school works out what her family actually does, she reckons they are sunk.

Then she meets Menzies, who has a bodyguard and a letter he keeps rereading and getting upset about. When Bridget is cornered, Menzies swaps his letter for hers so she will not be found out. His letter gets read to the whole class. It is from a child in a detention centre, describing the man in the next cell who shouted his children's names and tried to climb the razor wire.

Nobody in the room cares. The teacher rolls his eyes and hands out lunchtime detentions.

Gleitzman writes in tiny paragraphs, often one line long, and Bridget's voice is brilliant. She is honest about wanting to turn out like her parents even while she is terrified of being caught. Her dad thinks selling cheap appliances to people who cannot afford dear ones is basically a public service, and she half agrees with him.

Your reader will laugh at the Turkish personal organisers and then stop laughing at the letter. That is deliberate, and it works.

A few things to be ready for. The child writing those letters is locked up with his family, indefinitely, and nobody will tell them for how long. Menzies gets handcuffed and shut in a wardrobe by other children. There is a lot of casual crime played for laughs. And the book has a very clear opinion about how Australia treated people seeking asylum, which it does not soften at all. If your child asks questions about the news, this will hand them plenty more. If you would rather a story stayed a story, this one is not neutral and does not pretend to be.

What to read next

If they want to know about the boy behind those letters, Boy Overboard is his own account, told by him, opening with a football match played around a wrecked troop carrier.