Ratbags – Best of Pests by Tim Harris, illustrated by Shiloh Gordon

Title: Ratbags – Best of Pests

Author: Tim Harris, illustrated by Shiloh Gordon

Genre: Humour

Publisher: Puffin

Published: 4^th July 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 192

Price: $14.99

Synopsis: Book number 3 is here, in the stupendously rat-tastic Ratbags series from the award-winning, bestselling author and funny man, Tim Harris.

Humans have had enough of rats and their ratbag ways. Even Mr Pecky has stopped giving them pizza. But things get taken to a whole new level when robot minks with laser eyes roam the streets, ready to destroy all ratbags, stray cats and jazz musicians! How are the ratbags to survive the humans’ latest pest control? By joining forces with their enemy, naturally! With Cracker and the ratbags on the same team, things are about to get really hairy!

~*~

The Ratbags – and Jigsaw are back. They’re happy creating havoc and making mischief with new friend Fancy Rat, whom they liberated, and are enjoying the pizza that Jigsaw created, which Mr Pecky gives them every day. But now the rats are in trouble – the humans have found a new way to get rid of them – a robot mink with laser eyes and White Boots Pest Control. Not even the stray cat, Cracker, is safe! And now the rats are facing a clean city with no food, and now, they need to really ramp up their ratbag ways to defeat the pest control measures – and how do they do that? Well, I guess the only way they can – they have to work with Cracker and combine what he can do with the ingenuity of Jigsaw – who still hasn’t quite become a ratbag. But he is trying, and he is showing the other rats that being nice can work – sort of. As Cracker and the ratbags seek to destroy a common enemy, is this an alliance that can be maintained?

The third Ratbags book is a cracker of a rat-tastic book, because it continues the story thread about the rats and their relationships from the first two. It is definitely the kind of series you should try to read in order, because the endings often lead into the next book, so the final pages give a hint of what is to come next. Poor Jigsaw is still trying to fit in but he still likes to be good, to tidy his house, and to practise his piano for half an hour every day. He shines as a hero though because he is always looking out for his friends, Fancy Rat, Onion, and Ripple, as he doesn’t want them to fall into the traps that the humans and robot mink have set. I loved that Mr Pecky was angry that he couldn’t feed the rats their beloved pizza that they helped him create – it showed that they had a very unlikely ally in a world that hated them.

This is such a fun series – I like that it balances comic style images and text with traditional text, so it is a series that is good for kids branching out into different forms of books and reading, and for readers who might not like graphic novels but want to test out the format combined with a prose novel. It works well because it is easy to track each section as you read – I find it easier as a reader who often finds my eyes jump around to the wrong panel with graphic novels, so the combination works well for someone like me, even as an adult reader who loves kids’ books and loves the different kinds of kids’ books that are out these days. This series is engaging, and I love the way Tim as the author breaks the fourth wall and talks to Jigsaw and the reader. He uses humour and puns cleverly and dangles cliff hangers in front of the reader so that they have to read on to find out what happens. I like the way he does this as I think for kids who haven’t read a book with cliff hangers before – whether for a chapter or the next book – it gives them an idea of what to expect, and for readers who do know what a cliff hanger is, the cheeky way he employs this technique has been used to great effect, and we definitely sympathise with the rats and Cracker in this book. I am hoping that the rats and Cracker will become friends eventually and work together. They all seem like they want to cause havoc and mischief and cats are masters at this – Cracker could run up the curtains to distract the humans whilst the rats pull off their ratbaggery!

This series is always funny and engaging, and I am sure Jigsaw and his friend have many more adventures to come.