Age 9-11

The fashion for celebrities to write children’s fiction — Madonna, Sarah Ferguson, Sophie Dahl — makes any book with a famous name on the cover suspect. Ahmet Zappa is Frank Zappa’s son and this book shows signs of the celebrity fast-track to publication: the prose (made-up names aside) is ordinary and the author’s marginal doodles of monsters unskilled. And yet it has something. What it lacks in writerliness it partly makes up for in sincerity. It is apparently informed by the author’s experience of an eccentric but affectionate family, and by his childhood fear of monsters, which he tames by making them ludicrous. It concerns a brother and sister who discover their father is a “monsterterminator”, and have to rescue him from the evil Zarmaglorg. Punctuated by descriptions of such creatures as the brain- sucking Snargleflougasaurus and yucky recipes for anti-monster spells, the book is enlivened by photographs, featuring the author, of scenes from the story. Undemanding but engagingly presented, it will surely appeal to children who love grossness.

(Puffin £10.99)

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