Mouse Mallory was on his way to Granny and Gramp’s house for Christmas. Mouse was an unusual boy, he was small (hence the nickname ‘Mouse’) and didn’t like Christmas. It was a very white Christmas, and as they drove, the roads became more slippery. In the back Violet (Mouse’s older sister) was reading a book, Mouse was playing ‘Junior Joust’ on the iPad, Esme (Mouse’s younger sister) wanted to join in, so Mrs Mallory told Mouse to let her have a go. All Esme does, is make Mouse’s character completely pink. Distracted, Mrs Mallory didn’t notice the ice warning on the dashboard. Mouse was now playing with his toy T. Rex, Trex, he accidentally poked Esme’s eye with Trex’s tail, Violet was going to be sick, so was Esme. Mouse yanked Trex out of Esme’s hand, but the toy flew out of his reach, it skidded over Mum’s hand, she took her hand off the steering wheel, just for a second, Mouse undid his seat-belt to get his toy back, that’s when the car was really skidding. They spun and spun and finally stopped. Mouse reached for Trex again. The car tumbled over, spun and spun, tumbled and tumbled. The SUV slid to a halt, all mangled and out of shape. Everyone inside, jolted in their seat-belts. Apart from Mouse, who flew out the window.

When Mouse awoke a sheep was looking at him. They soon became friends (Mouse called the sheep Bar, as all she could say was baa).  Mouse heard a clanking coming from the ‘Haunted Woods’. Mouse didn’t turn around because Bar was whimpering. Suddenly a voice came out of the darkness. The voice turned out to be a real life version of Mouse’s toy horse, Nonky.

Nonky told Mouse that the clanking thing was trying to kill him, and the only way to defeat it, was to find the castle “There may be a castle”…

This book is one of the BEST books that I have EVER read!!!! I have never read anything like this, it is such a mix, it is funny, it’s sad, but over all it is really very well written. I have already decided that it is gonna be number 1 in my ‘Best Books of This Year’ list!

Thank you to Piers and Quercus for sending this over! (Out in shops 6th October 2016)

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