Muddle Earth

Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell's Muddle Earth is a very silly fantasy for 9 year olds about a boy who gets summoned to another world as a warrior hero by mistake.

What happens

The world comes first, and it's the best joke in the book. Muddle Earth has three moons, one of which only turns up when it feels like it. It has pink stinky hogs, and gas frogs that explode. It has batbirds, who keep bumping into each other, so the evening sky is full of small cries of "Ouch!"

Down in Goblintown they're making snotbread for tea and asking each other whether anyone's spat in it yet.

The wizard in charge of all this is Randalf, who lives on a houseboat and knows exactly one spell. He's lost the bottom of the piece of paper it's written on, so he improvises the last bit. Strong, loyal and hairy, he asks for.

What arrives is Joe Jefferson, dragged through a rhododendron bush by his dog Henry, who is strong, loyal and extremely hairy.

Randalf greets the dog as the warrior hero and assumes Joe is the sidekick. Or the sword-carrier. Or the axe-sharpener. Or, at a push, the lead-bearer.

The comedy is in the double act. Randalf calls himself Muddle Earth's leading wizard and his budgie Veronica points out that he's the only wizard. She wears little lace-up boots and never once lets him get away with anything. There's also Norbert the Not-Very-Big, an ogre who is enormous, has three eyes, cries a great deal and once nearly got called Norbert the Wet-Trousers instead.

Your reader will work out well before Joe does that absolutely nobody here is competent.

The best running gag is the previous hero. Randalf has managed this spell exactly twice, and hero number one was Quentin the Cake-Decorator. Nobody will say what happened to Quentin. Norbert bursts into tears whenever the name comes up.

Joe's own house is drawn just as sharply. A dad with a power tool, a mum with a vacuum cleaner attachment, a sister playing music through the ceiling and twins who flush the toilet while the dog is drinking from it.

Nothing much needs flagging. There's a small amount of ogre-based slapstick, a cave troll and some mild rudeness of the snot and underpants variety, which is presumably the point.

What to read next

There's more of Muddle Earth if this lands. Muddle Earth Too is in the library, set two years on, and this time the joke is a wizarding school called Stinkyhogs with a jeer-leading squad and a Glum Club.