The 13-Storey Treehouse

Andy Griffiths' The 13-Storey Treehouse is a very silly story for 7 year olds about two friends with a book due tomorrow and every distraction in the world.

What happens

Andy and his friend Terry live in a treehouse. Not any old treehouse, as Andy will tell you. It's got thirteen storeys, a see-through swimming pool, a lemonade fountain and a tank full of sharks (the man-eating kind, obviously). There's even a machine that trails after you and fires marshmallows at your face whenever you feel peckish.

It's also where they make their books. Andy writes the words and Terry draws the pictures. The trouble is they haven't made one all year, and their publisher Mr Big Nose wants it on his desk by five o'clock tomorrow. Or else.

So they sit down to work. And then Terry paints the neighbour's cat bright yellow to turn it into a canary. It works, sort of. Two little wings pop out of its back and it flies away.

And that's just the start! After that there's a drawing competition that ends with a giant banana to the head, a jar of sea-monkeys that hatches something very unexpected, and a bubblegum bubble full of burps that floats off into the sky with Terry inside it.

The joy of it is Andy's voice. He talks straight to your reader the whole way through. He'll explain exactly why his lie to the neighbour didn't count, because the second half of the sentence was true. He repeats himself to be sure you've understood ("And when I say 'a long time', I mean..."). And he's always completely sure he's the sensible one.

The chapters are short, the jokes come fast and the sentences are simple enough that a newly confident reader can race through. Who wouldn't want a lemonade fountain you can sit in?

There's some cartoon-style bashing (the banana, a monster flushed down the toilet) and a bit of name-calling like "numbskull". It's all very daft and nobody really gets hurt.

What to read next

If they finish it and want more, The 91-Storey Treehouse is the same pair a lot of storeys later. There's a whirlpool, a fortune teller and a big red button that nobody can remember the point of. Terry, naturally, really wants to push it.