My Brother’s Famous Bottom Takes Off!

Jeremy Strong's My Brother's Famous Bottom Takes Off is a laugh-out-loud family story for 8 year olds that goes all the way from a back garden to the Kennedy Space Center.

What happens

It starts with a sheep. Dad comes home with one and says it followed him because he said hello. He's decided it's called Elvis. Mum is NOT impressed, and Mr Tugg next door wants to know if they've got a permit.

Then Dad decides he belongs in the Big Book of World Records. His big idea is the longest piece of spaghetti in the world, stuck together end to end with superglue. You can probably guess how that goes. (Let's just say more spaghetti ends up stuck to Dad than to the table.)

That's exactly when a visitor turns up with some VERY big news. Cheese's famous bottom has won a competition. A video of it is going into space on a probe, to show any aliens out there what life on Earth is like. Honestly, what would they make of it?

So the whole family is invited to America to watch the rocket go up. There's a white stretch limo in New York, a hotel with a swing chair hanging from the ceiling and the view from the top of the Empire State Building. Dad falls in the lake in Central Park (of course he does). Then an astronaut called Cassie flies them over Cape Canaveral in a helicopter.

Nicholas is telling the story and it's like being on the trip with him. He's thrilled by everything and a bit embarrassed by Dad most of the time. Cassie is brilliant. She's the one grown-up who isn't taken in by Dad's nonsense for a second, and Dad goes very quiet around her.

The twins get loads of the best lines. Cheese wants to know why the plane doesn't flap its wings. From the top of the Empire State he spots a dipplypokus eating the cars, and Tomato reckons she can see all the way to Australia.

Takes Off is the tenth book about this lot. It's easy to pick up on its own, though, because Nicholas fills you in as he goes (the twins really were born in the back of a pizza van).

If you've got a reader who'd love their own family to go somewhere amazing and get it all slightly wrong, they'll have a great time here.

What to read next

Elvis isn't the first animal Dad has brought home, either. If they'd like to go right back to where this family's adventures begin, try My Dad's Got an Alligator.