The Great Brain Robbery

The Great Brain Robbery by P. G. Bell is a fast, inventive fantasy for 9 year olds about a girl who does her physics homework as though the laws were negotiable.

What happens

Suzy is eleven and in trouble with her physics teacher. Her calculations are all correct. The problem is that she keeps solving the problems by changing the direction of gravity halfway through, or by freezing time so the journey takes none at all.

Her mother marches into the meeting and asks the only question that matters. Are the answers wrong? They are not. Mr Marchwood's eye starts twitching.

Suzy isn't being cheeky. It's just that two months ago she woke up to find a troll building a railway through her house, and since then she has ridden a magical mail train across a frozen desert, through some haunted narrows and into the middle of the moon. Physics still works. It's simply stopped being the answer to everything.

This evening she has a gold-edged invitation and instructions to be ready for collection at seven o'clock. She has no idea who's collecting her.

At seven exactly, both her parents fall face first into their dinner, fast asleep, and a small knobbly troll in overalls strolls into the kitchen to say they've upgraded the sleeping spells.

Reading this is like being handed something new every couple of pages. The ideas come thick and fast and they're properly worked out rather than random, which is the difference between a book like this and a book that's just being silly. Your reader will want to explain the postal service to you at length.

Suzy is good company too. She kisses her sleeping parents goodbye because it doesn't seem fair to leave them like that, which tells you most of what you need to know about her.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Worth knowing that this isn't the first book about Suzy and the Impossible Postal Express, and it doesn't stop to catch you up. The troll at the kitchen door is greeted like an old friend, and there's a handwritten dedication in Suzy's handbook from a character you're expected to have met. She'll follow the plot, but a lot of the pleasure comes from already caring about this crew.

What to read next

Which is a good reason to go back to The Train to Impossible Places. It starts with a green flash in a very ordinary living room that nobody except Suzy notices, and with two exhausted parents who are far too tired to look up.