The 91-Storey Treehouse

Andy Griffiths' The 91-Storey Treehouse is a very silly story for 7 year olds about two friends who are handed three children to babysit and lose them almost straight away.

What happens

Andy and Terry live in a treehouse with 91 storeys. There's a submarine sandwich shop, a whirlpool that nothing can stop and a big red button that nobody can remember the point of. They make their books up there too (Andy writes the words and Terry draws the pictures).

Then their publisher, Mr Big Nose, calls. He's off to the opera and needs someone to mind his grandchildren. That's the twins, Alice and Albert, who have just turned six, and a baby who only ever says "Goo-goo ga-ga".

He wants all three back in his office by lunchtime tomorrow. He wants the new book too. OR ELSE!

The twins promise to be careful and Andy decides babysitting is easy. You can probably guess how that goes.

Within a couple of chapters the children are spinning round the whirlpool, and everyone who goes in after them ends up at the bottom of the sea. Getting out again takes a sandwich that works as a submarine, Terry's emergency self-inflating underpants and a genie whose three wishes all get spent on lollipops.

What makes it such fun is that Andy tells the story straight to your reader. He asks the readers questions and then complains that they're all shouting at once. When he and Terry start forgetting everything, their neighbour Jill takes over the telling (and gets distracted by a butterfly almost immediately).

The jokes are the kind children love to repeat. A tornado gets called a tomato. A spider becomes a spy cow. And a fortune teller called Madam Know-it-all will only answer questions in cryptic rhymes, although she's always right in the end.

Is there a scary bit or two? A little, but everything is played for laughs and nobody stays in trouble for long.

If you've got a reader who likes their stories fast, daft and full of things that couldn't possibly happen, this is perfect.

What to read next

If they want more, try The 13-Storey Treehouse, where the tree is a lot smaller and Terry is busy painting a cat bright yellow.