Review by Woodrow Phoenix

Boss of the Underworld introduces Shirley, an ordinary girl planning to spend the £1 in her hand on sweeties or chocolate and scoff the lot. But unluckily for her she drops the coin, it rolls away and into an uncovered manhole. Most people would sigh deeply, chalk it up to Fate and go on with their day, but Shirley is made of sterner (or maybe greedier and more desperate) stuff than that. She reaches into the hole to get her coin back and falls down, down, down to land in a dark, swampy place. “Where is this?” she asks the smiling creature who greets her. “It’s the underworld!” He explains. “A world that’s, you know, under your world! And we’re all so excited that you’ve arrived!”

Tor Freeman has a gleefully wonky, stumpy quality to her style that makes everything she draws funny to look at, a quality that makes this book instantly appealing as you wonder what the odd-looking characters are up to. It’s not just the drawings that are silly. The writing is equally colourful and slightly unpredictable too. Freeman plots her story with a big helping of all the clichés that come with children’s book adventures and flips them into something surprising with irreverent and smartypantsy dialogue from her characters, who don’t conform to their stereotypical roles. They know what they’re supposed to do, and they do it but they all have some opinions about it. Lots of the jokes are very clever commentary that work on one level for the young readers who will love the silliness and resonate on a second level for the adults who will appreciate the intelligence making this story entertaining.

Shirley’s new friend, a talkative giant cockroach called George, is her – and our – guide through the Underworld accompanying her on a journey filled with perils, digressions and villains as they descend towards her date with destiny, the terror of The Boss. If she survives the encounter it’s a way out for Shirley back to the surface again. Will they make it? You will enjoy finding out. On the evidence of this book Tor Freeman is one of the funniest people to put pen/pencil/brush/crayon to paper and thank goodness the fun continues in the second instalment of this series, Boss of the Underworld: Shirley vs the Huge Beast. Will it deliver more of the utterly ridiculous situations that bedevil our hero in this book? While they wait, children can download activity sheets from publishers Hachette, suitable for Key Stage 2 readers.