The Bad Guys 4 – Attack of the Zittens

Attack of the Zittens is Aaron Blabey's fourth Bad Guys book, a gloriously daft zombie-kitten caper for 7 year olds.

What happens

It opens on a news report. Billionaire mad scientist Dr Marmalade has let loose an army of zombie kittens (Zittens, for short). They're super-cute, and they WILL try to eat you.

Then we find the gang. Wolf, Snake, Piranha and Legs are stacked on top of Shark, who's standing in a leaky paddling pool in a sea of Zittens. Snake's big idea is to throw them the wolf. Shark agrees.

Help arrives by jet in the shape of Agent Fox. If they can catch a live Zitten, an old acquaintance of hers called Granny Gumbo might be able to brew an antidote. Wolf grabs one for her, and it spends most of the book clamped to his face.

Meanwhile Shark and Piranha are sent to spy on Marmalade's island. Shark goes as a dolphin (a cone taped to his nose and absolutely no clothes). Piranha is a freshwater fish and VERY fussy about salt water, so he rides along in a fishbowl on Shark's head as a pet goldfish called Mindy. He is not happy about it.

Granny Gumbo steals the show, though. She's a toothy old alligator who wants to eat Snake, sneezes her false teeth onto Wolf's face and needs a squirt of snake venom for her brew. You can probably guess where she gets it (a frying pan is involved).

Then there's Wolf, who goes all goofy and lovestruck whenever Agent Fox speaks. Snake never lets him forget it.

Nearly every page is a picture with a few speech bubbles. The words are big, the noises are HUGE (MUNCH! KABOOM!) and plenty of pages carry barely a sentence, so the faces do a lot of the joking. A child reading alone can whizz through it in one sitting and feel like they've finished a proper chapter book.

The humour is cartoon chaos with a good helping of bottom jokes. Granny boasts about eating dogs and Snake spends a short spell in her belly, but nobody's really hurt and it's all played for laughs. Wolf even pads a truck with pillows so no kitten gets squashed. Isn't that the most Wolf thing ever?

It ends on a TO BE CONTINUED, so be ready for some very loud "what happens next?!" protests.

What to read next

The gang already know Marmalade and Agent Fox when this one starts, so it isn't the place to begin. If your reader is new to the Bad Guys, go back to Episode One and meet Wolf, Snake, Shark and Piranha from the start.