Maya misses her Dad. They used to spend hours and hours together in his wooden shed in the back garden, imagining amazing things. Dad is a scientist – a sleep scientist you might say. He studies dreams and works for a company called Somnia.

But something went terribly wrong and Dad is in hospital, unable to wake up. His boss Lilith Delamere is paying all the expensive hospital bills, but Maya thinks there’s something not quite right about the tall, dark haired lady who looks like she hasn’t slept for months!

Maya loves to dream, both daydreaming (which gets her in trouble at school) and dreaming at night. When a boy from one of her dreams turns up in real life, she’s really not sure what’s going on. But he knows. His name is Teddy Flamewood and he and his sister are there to help Maya use her dreaming skills to put things right.

Teddy and Bea’s Mum has also been caught up in something strange at Somnia Industries, and they want to know what. Together they become The Dream Bandits and put together an ingenious and totally bonkers plan to save their parents.

A hospital heist, rebuilding a complicated dream machine, achieving imaginative dream bending against Somnia security (with lots of cows), and stopping a dastardly plot to take over the world’s dreams is totally unimaginable, until they achieve it – with their imaginations. Maya never thought her random dreams would save lives!

By the crazy creators of the hilarious and clever Kid Normal series, The Great Dream Robbery is even more imaginative – even using imagination to drive the plot. As always, the authors often stop to speak directly to the reader, whether to explain something, apologise for something or to just make us laugh.

The villain isn’t as villainous as we first believe, leaving me actually feeling sorry for her – which is great in a slapstick book such as this. The ‘science’ is completely bonkers but funny and somehow even believable (sort of), as it flows one way then another, giving a completely unpredictable tale.

I loved the constant quips between Teddy and the others, which drove them nuts but made me giggle.

The conclusion was wonderfully frightening even though I knew exactly what they had to do. But how do you think straight facing something so horrifying?

Definitely worth a read for a laugh, and maybe even some really strange dreams afterwards.

Authors – Greg James & Chris Smith

Age – 7+

For more funny books by this author duo, click here

(2021, Penguin, Dreams, Sleeping, Nightmares, Imagination, Penguin, Puffin, Action, Adventure, Animals, Crime, Family, Greed, Humour, Mystery, Science, Funny, Laugh out loud, Bonkers, Crazy, Dancing Unicorns, Cows)