Smallfoot – Movie Novelization

Tracey West's Smallfoot is the book of the animated film, a funny adventure for 8 year olds about a young Yeti who meets a human and starts asking questions.

What happens

Migo lives in a Yeti village on top of a mountain above the clouds. Every rule the Yetis live by is written on the stones worn by their leader, the Stonekeeper. The stones say the world floats on clouds. They say there's nothing underneath. And they definitely say there's no such thing as a Smallfoot.

Migo's dad has the job of waking up the Great Sky Snail every morning. He's fired out of a catapult headfirst into a giant gong! Migo can't wait to take over. But on his very first practice launch he misses the gong completely, sails over the village wall and comes face to face with a small, furless creature tumbling out of a crashed plane.

He's seen a Smallfoot. And when he tells everyone, he's banished.

Luckily there's a secret society who believe him. It's run by Meechee, the Stonekeeper's own daughter, with three very odd friends (one of them keeps suggesting everything is a cover-up). They lower Migo down through the clouds on a rope to find out what's really below. That goes about as well as you'd expect!

Meanwhile, down in the Himalayas, a wildlife TV presenter called Percy has a show that nobody watches. When he hears a pilot saw a Yeti, he has a very sneaky idea involving a fake Yeti costume.

It's so much fun to read. There's plenty of slapstick (lots of Yetis crashing into things) and some cheeky jokes too, like where the first Yetis came from. Hint. It involves the Sky Yak's bottom. The funniest bit is when Migo finally meets a human and neither of them can understand a word the other says.

It has a lovely message underneath as well. Migo has always had questions and he's always been told to push them down. Who hasn't been told "because I said so" at some point? This is a story that says curiosity is a good thing.

If your reader has seen the film they'll love reliving it, and if they haven't, it stands up really well on its own.

What to read next

If they're after more Yeti mayhem, There's A Yeti In The Playground by Pamela Butchart is a very funny next step. Izzy and her friends turn up to school on a snow day and become convinced a beast is on its way.