Miss Mary-Kate Martin’s Guide to Monsters 01 – The Wrath of the Woolington Wyrm

Karen Foxlee's The Wrath of the Woolington Wyrm, the first Miss Mary-Kate Martin's Guide to Monsters book, is a gentle mystery for 6 year olds about a girl who'd much rather stay home than go looking for a monster.

What happens

Mary-Kate is almost ten, and she worries. A lot. Her dress and hair bow are black, her shoes and backpack are red and sparkly, and if anything doesn't match she's sure something terrible will happen. Like an avalanche. On a train.

So a surprise work trip with her mum, Professor Martin, is a very big deal. The Prof is an archaeologist, and she's been called to a village called Woolington Well to look at some old bones found in a well.

The village is pretty and very, very quiet. Every doorstep has a saucer of milk on it. The inn is the Hook and Wyrm, with "wyrm" spelled oddly. And the man digging up the village square to build a shopping centre, Lord Woolington, is loud and friendly in a way that makes Mary-Kate uneasy.

Then she finds out about the Woolington Wyrm, a huge serpent from a local legend. Something has just flattened a fence and left it covered in slime!

What makes this book so lovely is how kindly it treats Mary-Kate's worries. You're right inside her head as she squeezes her stress ball, sings "la-la-la" to push bad thoughts away and names five things she can see. Her granny says she has trouble with beginnings and endings but she's very good with in-betweens. What a nice thing to hear if you're a worrier yourself!

She's also funny. She hates small talk and complicated sandwiches, and she finds the shopping channel soothing.

One gentle heads-up. Mary-Kate's dad disappeared on a mountain when she was five. It's part of her past rather than something that happens in the story, and it's handled softly. The legend also says the wyrm likes children, which might give very young readers a small shiver.

What to read next

If they love the idea of helping monsters instead of hunting them, The Basque Dragon could be the next one to pick up. Elliot and Uchenna have just joined a secret society that rescues mythical creatures, and they've already got some very rich enemies.