Sea-ing is Believing!

Steven Butler's Sea-ing is Believing is a gloriously gross, joke-stuffed story for 7 year olds about a boy whose long-dead great-great-great-grandad turns up for his own birthday party.

What happens

Frankie Banister lives in a secret seaside hotel for magical creatures. His great-great-great-granny is a troll called Regurgita Glump. The chef, Nancy, is a giant spider with four hands and eight sets of eyelashes. Weird is normal here.

It's the night before Grandad Abe's one hundred and seventy-fifth birthday, and the family are having a little dinner in the dark to toast him. Then Maudlin Maloney, a very grumpy leprechaun, barges in with a present. It's a tiny skull-shaped key that lets you phone the dead.

So of course they ring Abe. And a few minutes later he's standing (well, floating) in the kitchen.

Frankie should be thrilled. But he's heard some nasty rumours lately that Abe was a coward and a fibber, and he isn't sure his hero is a hero any more. The ghost seems lovely. He's also a little bit odd.

Then Abe remembers a fourth keyhole on the reception desk that nobody else has ever seen. Pour salty tea on it and a gold octopus lock appears, and down the family go, spinning deep under the hotel.

The fun of reading it is Frankie himself. He talks straight to you ("my human friend") and catches you up on everything, so a newcomer won't feel lost. Words are made up all over the place (disgusterous, honkhumptious, blunkin'), and there's a LOT of shouting in capitals.

The grossness is half the joke. Granny Regurgita stuffs sausages in her gob and bites chunks out of her plate. Guests throw sardines. The Molar Sisters, three tooth fairies with terrible teeth, lisp every line. Who wouldn't want a spider cooking seagull-snot birthday cake?

This one sits later in the series, and the start hurries through a whole summer of earlier chaos. That's fine for a child who likes to dive straight in. A reader who likes things in order might rather begin at the beginning.

What to read next

If so, the first Nothing to See Here Hotel book is where Frankie first explains that his granny is a troll and shows you round the place. It's just as bonkers.