David Walliams’s The Beast of Buckingham Palace is a dark and funny adventure for 9 year olds about a sickly prince who has never once stepped outside his own home.<\/p>\n
Prince Alfred is twelve and he’s never seen the sun. This is London in the future. The sky has been black for fifty years, ever since people wrecked the planet, and nothing grows any more.<\/p>\n
Alfred spends most days in bed surrounded by history books (he’s named after Alfred the Great, and feels anything but great). Lights go out at eight by order of the King. So of course he reads under the covers by candlelight.<\/p>\n
Then one night St Paul’s Cathedral goes up in flames and the royal guards drag his mother away. She’s accused of helping the revolutionaries. His father barely seems to notice anything these days. The person really running the country is the very smooth, very creepy Lord Protector.<\/p>\n
Alfred is sure Mama is innocent. So a boy who gets out of breath crossing his bedroom decides to turn detective. He takes out his whole window with four coat hangers and climbs down a drainpipe in his pyjamas!<\/p>\n
There are clues everywhere. Chalk markings on the ballroom floor. Cuts on the King’s hands that he can’t remember getting. A book kept under lock and key in the library. And the story opens on the legend of the griffin, half eagle and half lion, wondering whether one might ever live again.<\/p>\n
The jokes keep coming too. The robot butler, the Octobut, gets everything wrong and flings a giant pair of stinky underpants in Alfred’s face. Who wouldn’t want a butler like that? Nanny is in her eighties, with false teeth that go clickety-clack. Then there’s Mite, a starving and VERY smelly girl who swims into the palace up a flooded Tube tunnel.<\/p>\n
It’s worth knowing this is darker than most Walliams books. There’s machine-gun fire and a scream in the night. People in this kingdom can be executed, and Alfred’s mother is sent to the Tower. Nobody sent there ever comes back. Nothing gory happens on the page early on, but a child who worries about a parent being taken away might find it hard going.<\/p>\n
If your reader likes rooting for an underdog and enjoys a proper mystery alongside the giggles, Alfred is a hero they’ll probably love.<\/p>\n
For more creeping about after dark in London, try The Midnight Gang. Tom is twelve and stuck on a hospital ward where it’s lights out at eight and no reading under the covers. That’s exactly when the other children’s secret adventures begin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David Walliams’s The Beast of Buckingham Palace is a dark and funny adventure for 9 year olds about a sickly prince who has never once stepped outside his own home. Prince Alfred is twelve and he’s never seen the sun. This is London in the future. The sky has been black for fifty years, ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14389,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9236,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The Midnight Gang","lr_seo_hook":"A girl in rags, a hopeless robot butler and a prince turned detective.","lr_series_id":0,"lr_series_name":"","lr_series_position":0,"lr_series_label":"","lr_author_order":"248"},"book_tag":[1045],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[248],"class_list":["post-14390","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-adventure-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-david-walliams"],"yoast_title":"The Beast of Buckingham Palace by David Walliams | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A girl in rags, a hopeless robot butler and a prince turned detective. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n