The Smidgens Crash-Land

David O'Connell's The Smidgens Crash-Land is a zippy, funny adventure for 9 year olds about a girl who is seven centimetres tall and REALLY doesn't want to be sensible.

What happens

Gafferty Sprout is a Smidgen. Smidgens look just like humans, only tiny, and they live in secret tunnels under a town full of "Big Folk". Gafferty has just finished a whole month of being grounded. So what's the first thing she does? She goes gliding off the roof of a chocolate factory, strictly without her dad knowing.

A pigeon knocks the glider out of the sky and straight into a tub of lettuce at a market stall. A small boy called Noah spots them. Gafferty panics and tells him they're toys with "arty-farty intelligence" (he gently corrects her).

Then comes the big news. An old scholar called Crumpeck thinks he's found the Burrow, the home of a long-lost clan of Smidgens. The grown-ups plan an expedition. But they decide Gafferty is far too reckless to come.

She doesn't take it well. There's a proper row with her friend's big brother, horrible things get said on both sides, and she goes home in tears.

And then Crumpeck turns up asleep in a cleaners' cupboard, claiming to be on a top-secret mission. He wants her to come too. Can Gafferty be responsible for once? You'll have to read it to find out.

The best bit is seeing the human world from so far down. A mop handle is a climbing route. Strawberry jelly makes the perfect sticky shoes. Christmas is spelt "Krissmuss". A contact lens case makes a handy picnic basket (Mum calls it a Len's Case). Her baby brother Grub wears a slug onesie and is described as a psychopath, which will make any child with a small sibling laugh.

It's also really good on falling out with friends. Gafferty's mum tells her that having friends means ups and downs, and that she'll have to go and say sorry. Most of us have been there, so sure we're right that we say things we can't take back.

There's a creepier thread running alongside. A thief keeps ghosts in glass bottles round her neck, and she's being watched by an undertaker who raises the dead. It's shivery rather than scary, but worth mentioning for a nervous reader.

What to read next

This one picks up a month after Gafferty's first adventure and gives away quite a lot about how that went. So if you can, start with the first Smidgens book, where Gafferty takes her little brother Gobkin out to hunt a single chip from a burger bar.