Read Jack Beechwhistle 2 – Rise of the Hairy Horror free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Kes Gray's Jack Beechwhistle Rise of the Hairy Horror is a very funny spy story for 6 year olds, told by a boy who's certain the local hairdresser is an evil genius.
Jack "Dragon" Beechwhistle is a Junior Defender of the World (or so he tells us). He talks to World Defence HQ by pressing his earlobe. He keeps a Fact File of safety tips. And he's training his best mates Harry and Colin to be agents too, although they do have to be in bed by eight.
This time the danger is Valentino's, the barber's on the High Street. Harry and Colin went in asking for a light trim and came out totally scalped. Valentino asked them LOTS of questions. He swept up their hair and put it in a giant plastic bag. Suspicious? Jack certainly thinks so!
From there Jack's imagination takes off like a rocket. Valentino's bushy eyebrows are robot spy caterpillars ("spybrows"). The hair is being turned into woolly mammoths with hairdryers for trunks. And there's an Ice Age coming in about an hour and a half. Luckily Jack has a slingshot and a wheelbarrow full of pterodactyl eggs.
It's brilliantly silly. Jack is so completely confident, and so completely wrong about everything, that you can't help laughing. His "World Defence Tips" pop up all the way through (beware of anyone reading an upside-down foreign newspaper with eyeholes cut out). Children will love being in on the joke.
One thing grown-ups will notice that children might not. Jack is on his own a lot. His mum and dad are "down the pub" most evenings, so he has bread for his tea and goes out on his bike in the dark on a "shadow mission" to spy on Valentino's house. Jack tells it as if it's all perfectly normal and part of being an agent. Most young readers will take it at face value. A more thoughtful child might ask questions, and it's a gentle way into a chat if they do.
He also runs out of the barber's without paying for his own haircut, which is a very Jack thing to do, and probably not one to copy!
If you've got a reader who loves a narrator with a BIG imagination, Jack is a joy. The short chapters and the tips make it easy to dip in and out of.
This is Jack's second outing. His first, Attack of the Giant Slugs, has the same two loyal sidekicks, and a house with bulletproof windows and a chimney that giant slugs should be very wary of.
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