THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF CHARLIE SMALL

On pages designed to look as if they come from a grubby notebook, an eight-year-old explorer records and illustrates fantastical adventures that start (and perhaps stay, to judge from internal hints) in his own backyard. In headlong fashion, Charlie finds himself struck by lightning, barreling down a swollen stream, wrestling a crocodile and then riding a steam-powered mechanical rhino (diagram included) into a fight with a huge serpent. Subsequently captured by a gorilla who takes him as a pet to a city of silverbacks, he proceeds to learn their speech (including 50 different words for “banana”), to become their king and to save them from an invading horde of mandrills. Eventually he slips away, only to find himself literally hurled into a new set of simultaneously published escapades with the female Perfumed Pirates of Perfidy ($5.99, ISBN: 978-0-385-75137-7; PLB: $11.99, ISBN: 978-0-385-75138-9). Charlie inserts plenty of quick sketches, maps and even the odd eyeball or other artifact to prove that it’s all true—not that readers would ever doubt. Whether he’ll get back home in time for tea is anybody’s guess. (Fantasy. 8-10)