Toby and the Pixies: Worst King Ever!
James Turner and Andreas Schuster
David Fickling Books

Twelve year old Toby Cauldwell is desperately trying to fit in at Suburbiton High School, not very successfully though. Then there’s Mo who is in a similar situation and despite their differences the two become buddies.

Meanwhile deep in the undergrowth of Toby’s garden is a hidden kingdom of pixies ruled over by the evil King Thornprickle. Not for much longer however for having bid farewell to Mo, Toby kicks at a plaster gnome in his garden and the next thing he knows is that he’s being hailed as the new king of the pixies. Pixie law states that the ruler can do anything they want – not a prospect Toby relishes AT ALL. But perhaps the whole pixie thing is a dream; that’s what he tells his Dad who is completely obsessed with making the perfect piece of toast.

How wrong can the lad be though for the pixies just won’t leave him be. They come into his house, pop up in school and turn his life into a nightmare. Then Toby makes the biggest mistake thus far: he grants the pesky things freedom to become autonomous. Pretty soon the classrooms are awash with green sludge and mushrooms are springing up everywhere: it’s chaos. Time for a rethink decides Toby, but again it’s a case of the best laid plans. So the boy heads home with Mo to play Camel Calamity, a video game, but there’s no stopping those pixies. More crises occur with badgers in a bathtub and Mo morphing into a bird so Toby decides to take Mo into his confidence re the pixies.

Then, shock horror: state duty calls and his majesty is told he’s the groom at a royal wedding

and marrying Princess Persephone. How will he extricate himself from this one?
Maybe there will come a time when Toby decides that perhaps being the King of the Pixies isn’t really so bad after all – stranger things have happened.

All of this certainly goes to show that life is above all a journey of possibilities and to read of Toby et al is a deliciously fun way of demonstrating this.