Misery Guts

Keith wants to put the smiles back on his parents' faces. They've turned into Misery Guts along with all their neighbours - overwhelmed by the greyness of everything. The book opens with Keith painting his father's fish shop, as a birthday surprise, in Tropical Mango Hi Gloss Orange. He keeps trying to make them happy, pinning his hopes finally on a real Tropical Paradise seen on an Australian poster. After he's accidentally burnt down the shop, the family succumb to his dream and emigrate. That's only half the book - paradise has its own problems and Keith almost becomes a misery guts in his attempts to 'protect' his parents from finding out. Great fun, lovely to read aloud and eagerly snapped up by fans of Gleitzman's brilliant earlier novel, Two Weeks With The Queen.