The Last Kids on Earth and the Cosmic Beyond

Max Brallier's The Last Kids on Earth and the Cosmic Beyond is a snowy monster comedy for 9 year olds in which the baddie, for once, is a person.

What happens

Wakefield is buried in snow. Jack and the gang think it's brilliant. Their monster neighbours have never seen snow before, and they're absolutely terrified of it.

So Jack sets out to prove that snow is fun. He starts by getting the whole gang fired off the tree house roof in a giant sled catapult. It does not go to plan.

They crash-land next to a huge one-armed monster with a rider on its back. The rider pulls back her hood and she's a woman, the first other human they've seen since the world ended! She's also not friendly. Her monster swipes Jack's beloved baseball bat, the Louisville Slicer, and she screams something in the language of the series' great big villain. (Gulp.)

From there it's part detective story, part Christmas special. Quint tracks her down through a library card she dropped. Jack's attempts to make the monsters love winter keep going wrong. Ice fishing ends with a tentacle bursting up through the ice!

And June is quietly missing her family.

That's the heart of it. Jack was an orphan who never had a real family, so being snowed in with his best buddies is his idea of heaven. When he realises June feels the opposite, he decides to throw everyone the best Christmas ever. Has a monster ever been given a present? Not until now!

It's a really fun read, packed with sound effects, lists and jokes. Jack's crush on June is very sweet too (he calls her his buddy-crush, which says it all).

There are zombies, of course, and one trap with zombies waiting at the bottom that's properly tense. Fans of the series will lap it up.

The opening leans hard on what happened in the earlier books, so if you're new to Jack, June, Quint and Dirk, go back to The Last Kids on Earth before you dive in here.

What to read next

If your reader loves a little town where everything goes wrong, Disaster Diaries is in the library too. Three friends who've only just lived through a zombie outbreak spot a UFO through a telescope at a very boring birthday party.