
Down the Plot Hole
Down the Plot Hole
Annaleise Byrd
Walker Books, 2025
192pp., pbk., RRP $A16.99
9781760659059
Imagine if you preferred to be playing any sport in the world on a Saturday afternoon instead of having to stop indoors to practise your reading. Especially with a kid you have nothing in common with. Or, on the other hand, you enjoy reading but you’ve been assigned the task of helping someone with theirs, someone with whom you have nothing in common and who wants to be anywhere else instead.
And then, suddenly, one of the characters leaps from the pages of the book and you are dragged into it and a wild adventure….
That’s the situation for Basil Beedon and Terry Clegg, who are neighbours but the street they live in is the only thing they have in common. But since Basil’s dad and Terry’s nan got talking and it transpires that Terry will be kicked off the football team if his schoolwork doesn’t improve. Basil has been assigned to helping him with his reading. Every. Single. Saturday.
Because boys of that age who don’t like reading prefer a bit of action and gore, Basil chooses some of the original versions of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, but neither is prepared for what happens next…
Last time, they found themselves plunged into the fairytale world, where everyone was losing the plot. This time, words – well, chickens – are disappearing! Realising their fairytale friends are in danger of being sucked into oblivion by plot holes, the boys don’t hesitate before diving back into the Grimm world to warn them. It’s up to Basil and Terry to find out what’s going on and how to stop the plot holes from destroying everything … including their way home.
Once again, the author has crafted a fractured fairytale that not only engages Basil and Terry, but also the independent reader who is just discovering the fantasy adventure genre, and still prefers to keep a fingerhold on what they know before immersing themselves in a completely unfamiliar world with unfamiliar characters, situations and magic. With its clever wordplay and humour, and narrated by Basil as the reluctant tutor so the reader feels an integral part of the adventure because they have access to Basil’s thoughts, feelings, actions and responses, with appropriate promotion this is a series that may well capture both the quest for adventure and the fun of reading as it did for Terry.
Perhaps offer the first one to a reluctant reader to ‘test-drive’ to see if this new addition and any subsequent titles should be added to the collection. Maybe even set a challenge to discover the original titles that feature in the stories, provide access to them so they can read the originals rather than the more common sanitised versions for young children, and see where it goes, and what learning emerges that goes beyond the stories. Who were Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm and why did they write such grisly stories? After all, the CBCA Book Week theme is Book an Adventure…