The whimsy of the opening chapters and the delight of the line drawings in Mr Badger and the Missing Ape (9781742374178) failed to prepare me for the second story’s unexpected and rather gruesome ending. For decades, the foyer of Boubles Grand Hotel has featured a giant ape called Algernon, enclosed in a glass display case. He is a great favourite with guests and particularly with the manager, Sir Cecil, so when one morning the case is empty Mr Badger has to find the old, flea-bitten beast. The resolution of the story is enough to worry the heart and mind of any sensitive child; Leigh Hobbs will be lucky if someone doesn’t report him to the RSPCA.

Animals also rule in Frances Watts’s The Song of the Winns: The Gerander Trilogy, Book One (ABC Books, $14.99pb, 289 pp, 9780733327865), in which the characters are all mice. I did my best to shrug aside my aversion for small, furry, scuttling creatures and to lose myself in the narrative. Getting lost happened rather earlier than I had anticipated, and I was soon forced to scribble reminders to myself about who was doing what and where.

Triplets Alex, Alice, and Alistair have been living with their uncle and aunt since their parents disappeared while on a business trip. Alistair clings to a long, intricately patterned scarf knitted by his mother and given to him on the eve of her departure. When he is kidnapped, his siblings learn some startling secrets that partly explain why, in a province of dun-coloured mice, the three of them are ginger. To the north is the rich and powerful country of Souris, which years ago colonised and enslaved the weaker province of Gerander. The triplets’ parents were spies, travelling to Gerander on a secret mission. Native-born Geranders, they luckily did not have the distinctive ginger fur, but the triplets do. And now one of them has been kidnapped, doubtless to learn the secret that their parents died to protect. Alex and Alice decide it is up to them to save their brother.

If this were all, I could have kept up with the plot. But we are only three chapters in and ahead lie another twenty-five characters, about a dozen named countries, towns, oceans, mountains, and rivers, and complicated political back-stories about the rulers of Souris and the history of Gerandan resistance. A map and a list of characters would have helped immensely. In fact, the only thing that was crystal-clear to me, from its first appearance, was the significance of Alistair’s knitted scarf. I liked many things about this novel, including the characterisation and the often amusing dialogue, but its complications ultimately defeated me.

It was with some relief that I opened The Very Bad Book (Pan Macmillan, $14.99 pb, 172 pp, 9780330425650), confident that its mindless lunacy, silly cartoons, bad riddles, appalling poems, and predictable toilet humour would pose no challenge more difficult than keeping a straight face. This is the second Bad book by author Andy Griffiths and illustrator Terry Denton, and it comes with a sheet of gold medal stickers proclaiming it the winner of  ‘The Very Baddest Book in the World Award’. I am sure it is. It is also very funny, but don’t read it on a full stomach: some of the jokes will make sensitive adults throw up.

A snake in Elizabeth Fensham’s Bill Rules (University of Queensland Press, $14.95 pb, 179 pp, 9780702238482) nearly causes the death of Bill’s best friend Matty Grub. Luckily, he is on hand to save her. This follows hot on the heels of Bill nearly dying of hypothermia, and Matty saving him. Life seems precarious in Dewey Creek, and it becomes much more unpredictable when Bill’s irresponsible jailbird father comes home on parole. Readers were first introduced to the two friends and their families in Matty Forever (2009), and this companion volume offers more of Matty’s taste for adventure and Bill’s more passive take on life. The story encompasses missing fathers, single mothers, Koori heritage, and cultural practices (including a waffly bit of Aboriginal mysticism), but the climax is the confrontation when Bill learns that his father is dealing in stolen goods and offers him an ultimatum. ‘“You will tell Mum you have to sort yourself out. You will go and get yourself some sort of training so you can find a real job. And you will promise not to return ’til you’ve done that”, said Bill. “And you will keep that promise.”’ And what do you know? His father meekly shoots off to Sydney and enrols in a computer course at TAFE. Well, it is called Bill Rules.

It is back to rodent-as-hero in Maureen McCarthy’s warm and funny Careful What You Wish For (Allen & Unwin, $15.99 pb, 294 pp, 9781741758573). Shortly before she dies, Aunt Mary Ellen gives eleven-year-old Ruth an unusual stuffed toy, a rat called Rodney, which she was given as a child. As Ruth becomes more and more disgruntled with her eccentric family and the domestic chaos in which they live, Rodney magically and inexplicably offers her three chances to create a perfect life. And what does Ruth wish for? McCarthy maintains the tradition of making the result of each wish not exactly what the wisher has in mind. For example, Ruth’s desire for an ordered, quiet life without a family to bother her results in her being incarcerated in a 1950s Catholic boarding school. McCarthy’s clever manipulation of the timeline, and the gradual and partial release of information, add immeasurably to the suspense in the first third of the story; after that, the fun lies in waiting to discover what subtle twist Rodney will give to Ruth’s wishes. The ending is predictable but extremely satisfying.