Read Misadventures of Max Crumbly 03 – Masters of Mischief free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Rachel Renee Russell's Masters of Mischief is a laugh-out-loud diary adventure for 9 year olds, and it opens with a boy stuck in a school skip in the middle of the night.
Max Crumbly desperately wants to be a superhero. He doesn't have any superpowers. What he does have is a journal, a LOT of opinions and a real talent for landing in trouble.
This is the third book of his misadventures, and it picks up straight from the end of the second. Max and his friend Erin, a computer whiz, have just helped stop three bumbling burglars at their school. Now they're trapped in a stinking rubbish skip behind a fifteen-foot wall while the police search the building. Oh, and Max is wearing Erin's ice princess costume. With biker boots.
The first part of the book is one long night of trying to get home without being caught. There's a police dog Max knows from the animal rescue centre. There's a pickup truck they hide in, which turns out to belong to exactly the wrong people. And there's a very unlikely escape at a burger drive-through.
Reading it is like having Max shout his thoughts straight at you. Everything goes into CAPITALS when he panics (which is most of the time). He keeps telling you he's NOT scared and NOT crushing on Erin. Your reader will know better!
His honesty is half the fun. He tells Erin she smells nice at exactly the wrong moment. He once told his mum her homemade zucchini bread tasted like "soggy diaper" (she didn't take it well). And when he finally sneaks home, he meets a monster in the family room that turns out to be his big sister in an oatmeal face mask.
Underneath all the chaos there's a sweet friendship. Erin refuses to leave him behind, and he's genuinely worried about getting her into trouble.
There's some mild rude language ("crappy", "butt") and a lot of sneaking about at night and fibbing to parents. It's all played for laughs, but some families will want to know. Max also has an asthma attack while they're hiding in the truck.
It's best read after the first two journals, since this one starts halfway through a cliffhanger.
If they love a diary full of CAPS and school drama, the first Dork Diaries book is by the same author and has Nikki starting at a new school with a brand-new diary.
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