The 39-Storey Treehouse

Andy Griffiths' The 39-Storey Treehouse is a ridiculous, laugh-on-every-page adventure for 7 year olds about two friends whose new invention writes their book for them. Until it doesn't.

What happens

Andy and Terry live in a treehouse. It's 39 storeys high now, with a chocolate waterfall, a baby-dinosaur petting zoo and a boxing elephant called The Trunkinator. Andy writes the words and Terry draws the pictures.

Their publisher, Mr Big Nose, wants the next book by tomorrow afternoon. They haven't started. But Terry has been very busy on the secret 39th level.

He's built a Once-upon-a-time machine. You set the dials (funny all the way up to "milk-snortingly funny", lots of action, a little romance, one explosion) and it writes and draws the whole book in eight hours.

What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, actually. The machine decides their books are sloppy and badly drawn, locks them out of their own treehouse and slaps them into the forest with its giant hands.

The rescue plan involves a dot-to-dot rocket, the dark side of the moon and a professor whose job is un-inventing things. He's very good at it. Too good!

Andy talks straight to you the whole way through, and the jokes come thick and fast. There's a sleepover at their neighbour Jill's house where every single animal ends up in the bed. And Andy can't count, which makes joining the dots for that rocket a lot harder than it sounds.

It's the third Treehouse book (the tree grows by 13 storeys each time), but it starts by showing you round, so a new reader won't feel lost.

It's a brilliant pick for a reader who likes a book that knows it's a book. Some of the jokes are a bit gross (a sneeze in the face, a spooncil kept up a nose for emergencies), which is half the fun, frankly.

What to read next

If they want to go back a step, The 26-Storey Treehouse is where Andy finally gets round to telling the story of how he and Terry first met.