The trouble with living happily ever after is that it can get pretty boring, and for witches and wizards it can get ten times more boring than it does for ordinary people because they are ten times more intelligent than ordinary people.
Ordinary people who are older than about twenty are quite often already on the slippery slope downhill to a life of total boredom, but they pretend they’re not by gardening or going on holiday or restoring rusty old cars until they are shining like new, but just as rubbish as they were when they were new because they were rubbish cars in the first place.
At the end of ‘Better Homes and Gardens’ (Book 8 in the adventures of the Flood family), all was well with the world. The Floods had returned home to Transylvania Waters and re-established their place as the ruling royal family. But it’s become a bit boring, all that calm and tranquillity in a well-run and happy kingdom. So the children travel to New York and summer school. Aubergine Wealth is the economics professor and he outlines their project – a competition to see who can make the most money. The Flood children compete to make the most money, manipulating the stock market and cornering the market on toilet paper (amongst other things). All’s going well until the end of the project when a final competition rule is revealed.
The Floods are just your normal average family…wait…no they’re not. They’re the wackiest collection of wizards and witches that you’re ever likely to encounter. They seldom do what you think they might and whenever they’re backed into a corner, they find a hidden door and turn potential defeat into glorious triumph. But they are a family and they have many traits of the normal family – bickering siblings, the quiet one, the confident one, the loving and supporting parents. Sometimes they work together, sometimes they compete with each other. ‘The Floods’ series is hilarious fun, full of puns, crazy ideas and will have readers, chuckling, giggling and outright guffawing. Recommended for mid primary readers.
Who Wants to be a Billionaire? (Floods) Colin Thompson
Random House 2010
ISBN: 9781864719451
review by Claire Saxby, Children’s Author
www.clairesaxby.com
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