The Beast of Grubbers Nubbin

Guy Bass's The Beast of Grubbers Nubbin is a funny, gloriously gross monster mystery for 8 year olds about a castle full of hungry orphans and something huge prowling the town below.

What happens

Castle Grotteskew is meant to be full of monsters. Now there are a hundred orphans living there as well (Arabella calls them the Little Terrors). They're noisy, they're everywhere and they're STARVING.

The problem is that the professor's creations don't need to eat. So the Creature puts on a chef's hat and makes a stew from the professor's bins. There are tentacles under the surface and a lone toe floating past.

Stitch Head bravely takes a spoonful to set a good example. What happens next sends him whizzing round the dining hall like a let-go balloon, powered by his own sick! If your reader loves a gross-out joke they'll be in heaven.

So at midnight Arabella marches Stitch Head into town to pinch some food. That's when something as big as a horse, with glowing white eyes and great grey fangs, comes howling out of the fog. And it's gobbling up the food saved for the town's winter feast.

Is it one of the professor's creations? Stitch Head checks all three hundred and thirteen of them. Not one is even slightly beastly. So who is it?

Stitch Head is lovely company. He'd honestly rather hide in a dark corner, but he's promised himself he'll look after the orphans (and to him that counts as much as a promise said out loud).

Everyone around him is LOUD. Arabella has an insult for every occasion. Cuthbert, the orphans' self-appointed spokesperson, spells food F-U-D-E. And tiny Ivo is thrilled to be bossed about by the Creature, because it means someone's paying him attention.

It's worth knowing that the slapstick gets quite wild. Knives get juggled (one lands in the Creature's foot) and Arabella hauls an orphan across the floor in a headlock. Stitch Head gets swatted into a wall and has a tree dropped on him. It's all played for laughs, though.

This is the fifth Stitch Head book and it carries straight on from the fourth. If your reader is new to the castle, start at the very beginning with the first Stitch Head book.

What to read next

If they're after more monsters and mystery, try No More Mr Nice Spy, also by Guy Bass. A whole throne room watches a dinosaur secret agent swallow a princess's pug in one gulp (he's quite sure he didn't).