The Terrible Two Go Wild

Jory John and Mac Barnett's The Terrible Two Go Wild is a summer prank story for 9 year olds, set among the trees beyond the very cow-filled town of Yawnee Valley.

What happens

This is the third book about Miles and Niles, best friends and secret pranksters. Summer has started, and the book opens with a lovely little prologue about summer days, the kind where Monday means nothing and you forget what day it is.

Then we find the boys lying face down in a field of violets. They're covered in flowers for camouflage. Miles also added some sage and leeks, so he smells like a Thanksgiving turkey (they argue about whether they're arguing about it).

They're spying on Josh Barkin. Josh is back at Yawnee Valley Yelling and Push-Ups Camp, a boot camp for badly behaved kids, and he's the only camper in its history who ever asked to return. He's now in charge of his own tiny army of two, a pair of twins he's renamed Dugout and Mudflap. He shouts military orders at them and they obey every single one.

Miles and Niles have a plan involving a can of fruit cocktail. Let's just say it isn't fruit inside, and the result is glorious.

The fun is as much in the telling as in the pranks. The narrator keeps butting in. When one of the twins makes a feeble joke, it just adds "It was not a great joke." While the twins wait for a can to open, your reader is invited to put the book down and stare at a can for 180 seconds. It's very dry, very silly humour.

One thing to know before you hand it over. Josh is a proper bully. He throws a stick at one of the twins' faces, and he keeps a squirrel in a cage and raises a knife over it before the prank stops him. Miles and Niles go straight back to rescue it. Readers who are sensitive about animals might want a heads-up.

For a reader who'd take a clever prank over a big adventure any day, and who enjoys a narrator with opinions, this is a great time.

What to read next

It helps to know the boys already. If they haven't met them, go back to the first Terrible Two book, where Miles moves to Yawnee Valley expecting to be the biggest prankster at his new school.