Stanley and the Magic Lamp

There is a genie in Stanley Lambchop's teapot, and Jeff Brown turns that into a very funny book for 7 year olds about what wishes actually cost.

What happens

Stanley found the pot washed up on a beach and kept it as a birthday present for his mother. It is dark green with streaks of metal showing through. He gives the knob a rub with his pyjama sleeve to see if it will shine up.

Out come the puffs of black smoke, and out comes Prince Fawzi Mustafa Aslan Mirza Melek Namerd Haraz, who would rather you called him Prince Haraz.

He has been folded up inside that lamp for a thousand years with his knees against his chin, and he is in a very good mood about being out.

Arthur, Stanley's younger brother, dives straight under the bed and announces he will stay there until a doctor comes.

The wishes start small and go sideways almost at once. Stanley asks for a lion, changes his mind halfway through to an elephant, and ends up with a Liophant. It has an elephant's trunk, a lion's mane and a little grey tail with a gold tuft on the end, and it eats three pounds of mince in one sitting.

Then Mrs Lambchop mentions that she has always wondered what being famous feels like. Within the hour a tour bus has emptied itself onto the pavement and she is signing autographs outside the museum.

This is where the book turns out to be cleverer than it looks. Every single wish works exactly as asked and every single one causes a problem. Mrs Lambchop is worn out by teatime and has no privacy left. Arthur, made the strongest man in the world, works out that nobody will want to play with him. And when Mr Lambchop beats a rude tennis champion using borrowed magic, he is not proud of himself afterwards.

The parents are a joy throughout. They are terribly formal ("hay is for horses, Arthur, not people") and they take a genie in the bedroom entirely in their stride, but they do not let the boys use the magic homework basket, and they say why.

Nothing here is frightening. The one thing to know is the register. This is an American family from the 1980s, the parents speak like characters in an old film, and the jokes are dry rather than silly. A child who loves noisy, bouncy comedy might find the first chapter slow. Give it to the end of the Liophant and you'll know.

What to read next

This is the second Stanley book, and it will make more sense if your reader has met him before. If they haven't, the first Flat Stanley book is in the library too, and it's the one where a noticeboard falls on him in the night.