Zombie Bums from Uranus

Andy Griffiths' Zombie Bums from Uranus is a very silly adventure for 8 year olds about a boy whose bum talks back.

What happens

It opens with Zack Freeman skiing, and losing an argument with his own bottom, which wants to go home because it's cold and the thermal undies make it look fat.

Then the snow turns brown.

What follows is a crapalanche, a cliff, a swarm of unidentified flying bums, a river of bum-piranhas, a log that turns out to be a poopigator and a waterfall made of sewage. Zack pulls a fluffy pink toilet seat cover off his utility belt, wraps it round his head and waits to die.

Somebody shakes his shoulder. He's in a training simulator at a bum-fighting academy, and he has just failed it again.

He's failed it every time for three weeks. His instructor, who is called the Kicker, tells him he isn't even a bum-kicker's bootstrap. So Zack throws his utility belt on the floor and quits.

Meanwhile, out past the solar system, the Great White Bum is on fire and falling. It wants an army that won't answer back. And then it spots a planet whose rings are made of frozen dead bums, and works out that a whole planet of methane plus one flame equals a stench big enough to wake them up.

Zack's parents are up there too. They pretend to play in a symphony orchestra but they're actually bum-fighters, and right now they are cutting one of those ring bums open to see what it's made of. It keeps healing itself as they cut.

You can probably tell by now whether this is for your house.

If your reader thinks the word bum is the funniest word there is, this is about as good as it gets. Griffiths goes all in. He has invented bumcanos, rhinocerarses and the univarse, and he is genuinely funny about how much Zack and his bottom get on each other's nerves.

If that sort of thing sets your teeth on edge, this one is not going to convert you. There's no quieter layer underneath. That's not a criticism, just a heads up.

Two practical notes. This isn't the first Zack story, and the earlier one isn't in the library, though the book explains enough as it goes. And the catalogue can't decide between bum and butt, so titles in this series come both ways.

What to read next

What happens to Zack next is here too. Butt Wars opens with everyone at the academy being flattened by a giant brown blob.