Slime

David Walliams's Slime is a gloriously gross comedy for 9 year olds about a boy who mixes up a bath of gunk and gets a best friend out of it.

What happens

Ned is eleven and lives on the tiny Isle of Mulch. He gets about in a battered old wheelchair (usually doing wheelies). Every inch of Mulch belongs to his aunt, Greta Greed. She lives in a castle with 101 cats and can't stand children.

She's not the only one. Mulch is packed with grown-ups who make kids miserable. There's a headmaster who expels children for laughing. There are toyshop twins who frighten children for fun. There are ice-cream sellers who take your money and drive off without giving you an ice cream!

And then there's Ned's big sister, Jemima. She wears steel-capped boots with her flowery dresses. She's been secretly collecting jars of revolting gunk for years, all to fill his once-a-year birthday bath.

So Ned turns the tables. He tips every jar into the bath for her instead. The gunk starts to swirl. Then it turns into a volcano, a shark and a whale. Then it speaks to him in a very posh voice.

Slime can turn into anything at all, and it's very keen to help Ned get his own back. A giant boot for Jemima. A slide out of the bathroom window. A giant octopus that spins the headmaster round and flings him into the sky.

It's Walliams at full volume, and it's super silly. Loads of shouting in capitals, plenty of bogeys and bottom burps, and made-up words with footnotes sending you off to the "Walliamsictionary" (which doesn't exist, of course). Who doesn't enjoy a bit of revenge on a truly horrible grown-up?

There's a sweeter side under all the gunk, though. Ned's parents work from dawn until dusk and he's often on his own. He saved his pennies for years for a clockwork robot in the toyshop window, and what the twins did to him that day is really unfair. It's hard not to cheer when he finally gets to stand up to them.

If your reader loves a proper baddie and doesn't mind things getting a bit disgusting, this is going to be a big hit.

What to read next

If they want more of that loud, rude humour, try David Walliams's Fing, where a girl who always wants MORE demands something her poor parents aren't sure even exists.