Ten Whizzy Racers: Chaos at Crackling Creek
Timothy Knapman and Richard Merritt
Ladybird

This is the first in a new countdown series with a racing theme. The whizzy racers are Boo, Bolt, Bounce, Dash, Drift, Glint, Scoop, Speedy, Tricks and Zip. As the book begins they’ve all assembled in their vehicles at the start line in Fairytale Forest ready for the great Beanstalk Cup race to begin. The starting gun pops and off they go, but almost immediately there’s some thieving, out goes Drift and on go nine whizzy racers. Zip’s a kindly character and he pulls out of the race to pick up Red Riding Hood and deliver her safely to her Grandma’s house. And so the number of whizzers diminishes as all manner of accidents, alarming incidents

and other reasons for pulling out occur until only Bolt and Bounce remain in the running. Who will be first to cross the line and take the cup? One very happy racer. However, there’s another racer that is anything but happy and that, despite his shenanigans.

Timothy Knapman weaves a host of fairytale characters into his bouncy rhyming narrative including infuriated fairies, a terribly large troll and a mischievous unicorn. Each of these and lots more appear in Richard Merritt’s vibrant, action-packed scenes of the event. There’s so much to look at on each spread that little humans will be reluctant to whizz through the pages, rather they’ll want to take it slower and savour all the details.