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Synopsis

Deadly! by Morris Gleitzman, Paul Jennings

When Amy goes home for her birthday tea she finds her parents have vanished and in their place is a baby she's never seen before. Sprocket, at the same time, wakes up on a deserted mountainside. Together - with the baby - they team up on a deadly quest to find their familes.

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Reviews

When Amy arrives home for her birthday tea, her parents have vanished and in their place is a baby she's never seen before. At around the same time, Sprocket wakes up naked on a deserted mountainside and realises he has lost his memory. Another imaginative Gleitzman/Jennings collaboration following the huge success of Wicked!
Not for the delicate, this
junior
novel opens with a naked Sprocket watching aghast as a pack of armed children, led by Pooper Scooper, investigate his excretement in search of a mysterious blue seed. Alternate chapters follow the story of Amy, whose parents are on bad terms, probably, Amy believes because her father is having an affair. Eventually, the two characters meet. Amy's father is connected with the seed, and its mysterious powers of affecting time, through the scientific research which has been devouring his attention. Sprockett, on the run from nude kidnappers, finds the skin cream whose odour Amy recognizes as the smell on her father's clothes. Their astonishment at this discovery is superseeded when Amy picks up an abandoned baby which turns out to be her own mother. Menacing in tone, this novel will also be too scatological for some tastes. But although the story of the substance which adds on and takes off years is not new, this enterprising update is pacy, and not without psychological insight. Poised on the cusp of adolescence, Amy begins to understand that her mother's irritability is the result of an unhappy childhood. Paradoxically, the perilous substance is the key to re-mothering her progenitor, and hence herself. Sprocket too finds his niche, and Amy's parents are reconciled. (Kirkus UK)

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About The Author

Paul Jennings, a highly successful author, is concerned about making reading interesting and fun. His ROUND THE TWIST became a successful TV series and THE GIZMO movie is now showing in Australia. Morris Gleitzman was a screenwriter for TV and a newspaper columnist before beginning to write children's books. The play of TWO WEEKS WITH THE QUEEN was produced at the National Theatre, and BUMFACE was shortlisted for The Guardian Prize. Paul and Morris live in Australia.
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