BOOM!
BOOM! or 70,000 Light Years – Jimbo is always getting into trouble. So when Jimbo’s sister, Becky tells him that he is going to be expelled and sent to Fenham, a special school for kids with problems, he worries that she might be telling the truth. The ever-resourceful Charlie, however, comes up with the perfect plan to set Jimbo’s mind at rest.
The two boys hide a walkie-talkie in the school staff room. While doing this, however, they here two of their teachers, Mrs Pearce and Mr Kid, talking a language they neither recognise nor understand. They decide to investigate.
Things do not go according to plan. By the end of the week Jimbo has been kidnapped by a race of humanoids with short, hairy tails and no navels and taken to Tüngck, a planet somewhere in the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy. He manages to escape from the Arrivals Unit only to be kidnapped a second time by a group of Giant Octopus Monkey Spiders who live in the sewers and like shaking their booties to classic seventies disco
(‘Gimme, Gimme, Gimme a man after midnight!’)
Will Jimbo find Charlie? Even if he does, how will they manage the 70,000 light year journey back home? And why will a can of l’Oreal Extra Strength Hair Spray prove vital?
The many fans of Mark Haddon’s novels for adults, THE CURIOUS
INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME and A SPOT OF BOTHER
will recognise the author’s warmth, humour and humanity in this re-written
version of an earlier novel for children.
And there’s raspberry pavlova in it, too. And salmon mousse. And beef
Wellington. And Red Leicester and goosebury jam sandwiches. And stawberries
in mayonnaise. There is very nearly badger in vomit, but it is narrowly
avoided at the last minute.
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