Bunny vs Monkey: Bunny Bonanza!
Jamie Smart
David Fickling Books


If you’ve yet to make the acquaintance of Bunny et al. these wacky short stories (‘strips’) of the woodland dwelling creatures including the megolomaniac Monkey first appeared in The Phoenix comic. David Fickling Books published several compilation books of these and then bind-ups of which this is the latest.


As the new year begins down in the woods, all is well except that Bunny is inexplicably missing. We join the gang on their search for their floppy-eared pal. As they hunt high and low they encounter several imposters: there’s Robot Bunny, Neanderbunny, Old Bunny aka Algernon Withersnap the Third, Bunny Law, Shadow Bunny and even weirder, Not Bunny: Maybe Bunny is merely suffering from acute amnesia or are these other leporine forms due to some other phenomenon. Most important, having gone right through the year, will the real Bunny return to take possession of his residence?


Anarchic, brim full of high jinks (and some decidedly low ones), frenetic and with a plethora of giggle-inducing surreal happenings, this bumper volume left this reviewer’s head spinning.

Groosham Grange: the graphic novel
Anthony Horowitz, adapted by Max L’Hermenier, illustrated by Clément Lefèvre
Walker Books


One of Horowitz’s classics is transformed into a hilarious graphic novel version.
We follow David Eliot from the time his parents, despairing over the fact that their son has been expelled from his school Beton College, decide to send him to Groosham Grange, an establishment in a gothic castle on Skull Island with a reputation for sorting out rebellious pupils.


Not long after his arrival David overhears a conversation taking place in the headmaster’s study to the effect that something very nasty is going to happen to him and possibly the new friends Jill and Jeffery whom he met on the train..


They discover that every night the other pupils go to the library and then disappear. The three really must make an escape plan though it may not be possible for anyone to escape Groosham Grange.


Full of thrills and spooky chills, this is weird and strangely gripping.