The spongy void by Andrew Hansen and Jessica Roberts

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Bab Sharkey and the Animal Mummies book 3. Walker Books, 2019. ISBN: 9781760651183.
(Age: 8-10) Themes: Ancient Egypt, Mummies, Good and Evil. Husband and wife team Andrew Hansen and Jessica Roberts continue their humorous Bab Sharkey and the Animal Mummies series in The Spongy Void. Fast-paced, filled with crazy settings, humour, jokes, songs and secrets revealed, this a thrilling junior novel.
Bab's best friends the animal mummies Prong and Scaler join him in his bedroom, encouraging him to create a rollercoaster and volcano in his bedroom, all by the magic of his pharaoh beard. Meanwhile back in ancient Egypt, the evil Unpharoah and her offsider Cainus the jackal are conjuring up another evil plan. She wants to rule the kingdom with the power of Bab's magic beard and has just the right place to imprison Bab and his animal mummy friends Prong and Scaler. She recalls childhood memories of a special prison, 'a chamber of terrible purple magic,' the spongy void hidden deep inside the Great Pyramid. Cainus cunningly captures Scaler and lures Babs and Prong the ibis mummy here.
The eerie chamber's walls are painted with hundreds of hieroglyphs from both ancient and modern times. Bab turns into a stone boy during a set of mishaps and spends the rest of his time as a living statue. Things quickly escalate as Bab, his father and Prong and Scaler use a hairy beard travelator to escape from the pyramid. What an exciting and unexpected ending for Bab and his family!
Jessica Roberts' black-and-white cartoons add fun and drama, different text styles engage the readers. Little snippets of Egyptian history also make The Spongy Void an exciting, slightly madcap novel for fans of history and humour.
Rhyllis Bignell

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