My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish 05 – Live and Let Swim

Mo O'Hara's Live and Let Swim is the fifth My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish book, a gloriously silly aquarium adventure for 7 year olds.

What happens

Frankie was once a perfectly ordinary goldfish. Then Mark, Tom's big brother, dunked him in toxic gunk, and Tom and Pradeep (his best mate) used a battery to zap him awake again. Now he's green-eyed, hypnotic and fiercely loyal. Tom takes him everywhere, and today that means smuggling him into the City Aquarium in a glittery water bottle.

What could go wrong? Quite a lot. Pradeep points out that the dancing shark mascot's song doesn't rhyme, and the shark and the octopus quit on the spot. A janitor called Oddjobz has an umbrella that turns into a mop. And Pradeep's three-year-old sister Sami decides the famous octopus looks lonely, so she tips Frankie into his tank to play.

The Amazing Antonio can predict football results. He's also very keen on lunch.

What follows is a chase through the aquarium's pipes, from the ray pool to the seahorse nursery. Frankie flings starfish at Antonio like ninja throwing stars. And somewhere behind a Staff Only door, Mark and Pradeep's brother Sanj have an evil plan involving the octopus, the lottery and a tank of hammerhead sharks.

Tom tells it, and it's properly funny. He and Pradeep have whole conversations just by looking at each other. Sami is pretending to be a shark and bites everyone's sleeves. Mark strokes his vampire kitten, Fang, and does his evil laugh.

Is any of it sensible? Not remotely. Will your reader giggle? Almost certainly. The evil big brothers call the younger ones morons a lot, which is part of the joke, and there's a scary moment with Sami dangling over the shark tank that's sorted out quickly.

There's a second story in the book too, where a TV talent show for pets comes to town.

What to read next

If they want to know how a goldfish ends up a zombie in the first place, it's all in the very first Zombie Goldfish book. That's the one where Mark gets a chemistry set for his birthday, and a bug-eyed goldfish seems to mouth "Help me" through the glass.