In the Doghouse ¦ The Sleeping Party

The adventures of the mischievous twins, Springy and Sam, in the suburban B & B run by their struggling mother continue on their entertaining course. Fiddleface, their demented teacher, and Uncle Jock, their pleasantly enigmatic old lodger, appear again as the children pry into the mystery of a houseful of starving dogs in the first story, and the obnoxious behaviour of a misanthropic guest in the second.

Jan Needle still likes to steer close to the wind - at the end of The Sleeping Party, the villain is baked in effigy as a pig-shaped cake into which the children plunge their knives - but the overall impression left by these two books is of the reassuringly familiar world of the serial.