Max & Chaffy: Hunt for the Pirate’s Gold!
Jamie Smart
David Fickling Books

From the creator of Bunny vs Monkey and Looshkin books, the Max & Chaffy books (this is the fourth), are a less demanding read. Set on Animal Island they feature Max and her pal cum sidekick Chaffy who, having now become official members of the chaffy finding club, are very enthusiastic about sallying forth on their next chaffy hunt. (For the uninitiated Chaffies are small spherical beings with one and a half ears and like to eat lettuce, most of them anyway.)

As they’re wandering on the beach the friends come across Foghorn. He offers to take them in his boat to a secret part of the Island, reachable only by sea. Once there, the threesome rapidly becomes a foursome when Chaffy finds a bobbly creature that the rather curmudgeonly Foghorn insists is not actually a chaffy. Max suggests it’s a Puffa Chaffy and soon encased in special underwater bubbles,

Puffa Chaffy, Max and Chaffy embark on an underwater foray involving a map in a bottle, the possibility of treasure and a pirate captain related to Foghorn. It’s an adventure that Foghorn cannot resist joining once he discovers a personal connection. He even lets his kindheartedness come to the surface whenever Puffa Chaffy feels scared and all ends happily with the finding of not one but two new chaffies.

With its vibrant colour palette and a text almost exclusively in speech bubbles, this is a delight – engaging and full of charm. Included too are some puzzle extras..

Rather more complex is

Magic Pickle and the Roots of Doom
Scott Morse
Scholastic

Herein you will find the titular Magic Pickle that flies around sporting a large star on its head, and his young human sidekick, Jo Jo. She wears a purple onesie with a unicorn horn.

When Magic Pickle is approached by Herb Cloverson, a decidedly malodorous character that is far from happy with life as a garlic clove, Pickle is rather dismissive. Then the clove is itself approached by the evil tuber, Square Root, who says he’s looking for a friend. So Herb Cloverson becomes Square Root’s sidekick and the two set about removing the star from Magic Pickle and thus taking away his power. With the goal achieved and the star on Square Root’s head, he sets about amassing an underground army.

Meanwhile the powerless Pickle is thoroughly downcast and it’s left to Jo-Jo to encourage him to fight back. By now Herb Cloverson has realised that he’s being used and hence is still looking for a friend. So too is Magic Pickle, so can they put things right between them? And will justice finally prevail? Perhaps, with some input from the Information Leek who offers assistance to Jo-Jo, together with the power of teamwork

Replete with veggie-related puns, it’s funny, clever, crazily compelling and diverting in a daft way.