The Dastardly Deed

Holly Grant's The Dastardly Deed is a madcap, slightly spooky adventure for 8 year olds that begins in a hot-air balloon in the middle of the night.

What happens

This one carries straight on from The League of Beastly Dreadfuls. It opens with Anastasia's head still spinning from everything that happened in that book, so if your reader hasn't met her yet, start there. (It's a story where you really don't want the secrets given away!)

Anastasia is almost eleven. She's been whisked away from her very ordinary life in a town called Mooselick. Now she's floating across the Atlantic towards Switzerland, with two eccentric grown-ups and a picnic basket that never seems to run out.

There are s'mores toasted over the balloon's burner. There are whales and snickerdoodles. There's no loo either, which is exactly as funny and awkward as you'd imagine.

Then a snowstorm brings them down with a crunch. A cheese shop has a secret door in its cellar. Ninety-nine steps lead down to a hidden underground city full of bats and gondolas, with a palace in the middle of a weeping lagoon. And a grandmother Anastasia has never met turns out to be rather grander than she expected.

It reads like being told a story by someone having a brilliant time. The narrator keeps chatting to you ("dear Reader") and the jokes come thick and fast. There's a Saint Bernard with a barrel on his collar, a grown-up who collects cuckoo clocks and an aunt with a dozen bats living in her enormous wig.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Underneath the fun there's real sadness. Anastasia's dad has vanished and she doesn't know if he's alive. She learns that her real mum died when she was a baby. There are also people out hunting for her with silver weapons.

A sensitive reader might feel Anastasia's homesickness quite a lot. If they love big, silly, cosy-creepy worlds, they'll be very happy to stay a while.

What to read next

If they'd like another girl nobody expected much of, try The Trials of Morrigan Crow. Morrigan's whole town has written her off, until a letter arrives from a stranger called Jupiter North in a place called Nevermoor.