David Walliams’ new book, The Midnight Gang

When the clock strikes midnight most children are fast asleep, but for the Midnight Gang the journey is just beginning. This extraordinary story of five children in a wonderfully inventive and eccentric hospital setting promises to take fans from around the globe on an unmissable midnight adventure.

We have never read a book by David Walliams before but I know he is a pretty successful children’s author, as well as all the other things he does. The Midnight Gang is his latest book, published by HarperCollins Children’s Books, and we were delighted to receive a copy to read together.

The first thing I noticed was how big the book is! My son loves chapter books, and I love reading them with him, but I was a little nervous about getting through this. So I’m going to be totally honest and say we are only half way through. We read a couple of chapters at night together, for some reason I just can’t get my son to read chapter books on his own! However, at the moment I’m just really happy he loves David Walliams style. For a while he would only read Star Wars books so I’m really hoping to be able to buy some of the author’s other books. There are so many wonderful books to read I am working really hard to open his mind to the world of books!

I think this book is aimed at those 8+, so slightly above the reading age of my 6 year old, but it’s still a really fun children’s book. It features quite a few characters but we loved the illustrations (by Tony Ross) of them at the beginning of the book, something my son keeps returning to as we read it. In fact, all the illustrations are great and help break up the text, which I think is important in a children’s book.

So far we’re really enjoying The Midnight Gang. We like all the characters, well except for the Porter and Matron, but look forward to reading together and finding out more about Tom and what’s inside Lord Funt Hospital. 

David Walliams’ new book, The Midnight Gang, is already at the top of the book charts and is currently available for £5.00 from Amazon.

My son also enjoyed seeing the activity sheets which accompany this book. I have shared some of my favourites below. Just right click and save them so you can print them out yourselves. You can find lots more at the World of David Walliams website, along with more about all his other books too.

I received a complimentary copy of the book courtesy of HarperCollins Children’s Books through the BritMums Book Club.