Saturday 17 November 2012

The Improbable Party on Purple Plum Lane by Margaret J. McMaster



This is a short book that I won in a Goodreads First Reads contest. I read it with my nearly-6-year-old over a couple of bedtimes. 

The opening line is a bit corny: “On a dark and stormy night…". After that you are straight into the story though which gets going immediately, not even introducing the characters, so there is an assumption you've read the previous books in the series. However given it is a short book you’d expect it to get on with things quickly like that anyway and you can pick up pretty soon who is who, like that Petey is a parrot for example. This is also helped by the occasional full colour picture which shows the characters to which the text relates.

The story is about Stewart, the narrator, going to Mrs. Chairbottom’s house for a supposed Halloween party. And it is, in a certain sense.

The book is a little American with words like mom and cellphone, and is in the present tense, but my daughter enjoyed it. The way the book is written is good because it creates suspense with plenty of “dun, dun, dunnnnn” moments that my daughter could easily recognise, especially in the first-half. The book is short and is probably best for children just getting into reading a little bit longer books, but not too long.

This book is listed on Amazon UK HERE.

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