Age 2-6

A little boy called Dexter Bexley meets a large blue creature in a small bowler hat who wants to eat him. But Dexter has a better idea. He distracts the monster by finding him more amusing things to do. Together they engage in activities ranging from a flower-delivery business (so successful that they end up with a boardroom high up in an office block) to a detective agency that solves the Rubber Glove Affair and the Great Sausage Heist. The beastie gets bored easily, and when he does, he gets hungry. But by the time Dexter has run out of distracting ideas, the two are friends, and eating a lollipop is more tempting than eating your friend. This book is an inspired celebration of imaginative play, working at simple and sophisticated levels, in real time and fantasy time. It is comic, suspenseful and tender, has surprising developments, and Stewart’s grainy, surreal, retro images — with, for instance, a mountainous sundae, a beastie whose face looks as though it has been torn off at the edge and characters tied up with sausages — are a delight.

DEXTER BEXLEY AND THE BIG BLUE BEASTIE by Joel Stewart

(Doubleday £10.99)

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