There’s a Beast in the Basement!

Pamela Butchart's There's a Beast in the Basement is a loud, silly school mystery for 7 year olds starring Izzy and her gang of amateur detectives.

What happens

Something is very wrong with Mr Graves, the head teacher. He keeps bursting into classrooms, saying "Just ignore me!" and emptying every cupboard onto the floor. He crawls along the corridor. Then he cries all the way through an assembly about the new vegan sausages. Who could possibly ignore that?

Jodi, who wants to be the sort of police officer who can read minds, decides it's time to investigate. The problem is annoying Gary Petrie. His dad has been called in for an emergency, and Gary knows about a secret door in the playground that leads down to a basement nobody else knew existed.

Gary wants to be in charge. Jodi very nearly explodes. Then Gary gets shut in down there, in the dark, and comes out with a story about scraping and scratching noises...

The whole thing is told by Izzy in one big excited rush. Loads of words are in CAPITALS and the jokes come thick and fast. Maisie is scared of pretty much everything and makes the table shake when she's nervous. Zach is the worst liar in the school (he tells their teacher they were following a spider with nine legs).

It's the kind of book children read aloud to whoever happens to be nearby, whether that person wants to hear it or not! It's spooky in the silliest possible way, and the best bits are the friends arguing, making up and sticking together.

There's a lovely surprise in how Gary turns out too. When they all go round to his house for pizza, his dad greets them in a flour-covered apron, and it's suddenly obvious where Gary gets his catchphrases from.

Izzy happily mentions some of the gang's earlier cases along the way (vampire rats, for one).

What to read next

If they love this gang, go back to Attack of the Demon Dinner Ladies, one of the earlier cases Izzy mentions, which starts on a Friday when nobody can smell the shepherd's pie.