My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish 03 – Fins of Fury

Mo O'Hara's Fins of Fury, the third My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish book, sends a boy and his undead pet goldfish camping, in a very silly adventure for 7 year olds.

What happens

Tom did not want to go on this camping weekend. He keeps tripping over his bootlaces, the mosquitoes are enormous, and his Evil Scientist big brother Mark has come too (and has promised to pound him into the ground if he so much as says his name).

So Tom brings Frankie along in a water canteen round his neck. Frankie is a zombie goldfish who was revived with a battery. His eyes glow green when trouble's coming, his stare can hypnotise people, and he has hated Mark ever since Mark tried to flush him.

Then things start going wrong. Yellow eyes in the bushes. A tent turned upside down and all Tom's snacks gone. A claw mark on the tent flap. Soon everyone is whispering about the Beast of Burdock Woods. Is it a real animal, or another of Mark's evil plans?

There's a TV survival hero who arrives by dangling from a helicopter, and a famous animal tracker with a monocle. At least one of them isn't quite what he seems.

Reading it is pure silliness. Tom tells it himself, and he's a hopeless camper with a great line in bad jokes. Pradeep, Tom's best mate, knows every survival rule by its number. Frankie talks back in sarcastic fin sign language. At one point Tom has to hide Frankie in his mouth to stop him being tipped onto the campfire (Tom brushes his teeth about twenty times afterwards, and it still doesn't help).

The creepy bits are campfire-story creepy, never properly frightening, and the big brother meanness is played for laughs. Being American, it's all Mom, flashlights and sneakers.

What to read next

This is Frankie's third outing. If they'd like to meet him properly, go back to the first Zombie Goldfish book, where Mark's chemistry set and a goldfish from the pet shop get the whole thing started.