There are three reasons I’m scared of Granny and Grandad’s outdoor loo.
- The door might close and leave me locked inside forever.
- Every creepy-crawly in the whole wide world lives in there.
- (and the big reason) The toilet has no bottom.
It’s not like a normal toilet, with water and a U-tube. Granny and Grandad’s toilet is just a hole over a big black pit. Anything could be hiding down there. Like a witch or a werewolf. Or a hideous green water monster with gigantic teeth.
I don’t consider myself a scaredy-cat. I’m nine years old and I wear size 7 shoes. And that’s big for my age. But only a fool wouldn’t be scared of that toilet.
Thomas loves everything about his once-a-month weekends at his grandparents’ house. Everything, that is, except their scary outside loo. Anything could live in that bottomless pit. But even Thomas hadn’t fully realised just what was down there. But he has a chance to find out, when he falls in. He encounters a plesiosaur, a man wearing a skirt, some avaricious neighbours and a fellow-adventurer, Ellie. When everything begins to spin, Thomas and Ellie need all their smarts to keep Saurus Street safe. There are black and white illustrations on every opening. Potentially challenging words are in a range of different fonts and styled to help support their meaning.
‘Saurus Street 5: A Plesiosaur Broke My Bathtub’ is a whirlwind of an adventure, built around that familiar scary place – the outside loo. Spiders and bugs and webs are one thing, but it’s the unknown at the bottom of that hole that generates the most fear. Nick Falk takes the reader to the bottom and beyond, in an explosive tidal wave of an adventure, all the way to the sea. Along the way, people behave badly, and it’s up to the intrepid young main characters to save the day. And they do, using all the ingenuity and imagination that they are capable of. Saurus Street survives to adventure on. Ideal for independent readers in transition to full-length novels. A rip-roaring read.
Saurus Street 5: A Plesiosaur Broke My Bathtub, Nick Falk ill Tony Flowers Random House Australia 2013 ISBN: 9780857981820
review by Claire Saxby, Children’s author and bookseller
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