With Puppy Fat, Morris Gleitzman, the delightfully inventive and highly successful Australia-based author of Two Weeks with the Queen, Blabber Mouth and Sticky Beak gives readers the third book in a series about Keith Shipley and his worrying parents. Keith's main aim in life is to cheer up his unhappy parents. Having tried, unsuccessfully, (in the first two books) to improve their troubled relationship, young Keith has now to accept their separation. His task now is to make them presentable enough to attract new partners. When young Tracy and glamorous Auntie Bev the beautician arrive from Australia the ever-caring and wonderfully imaginative Keith thinks he has the answer. But poor Tracy is herself being "improved" by her neurotically skinny Auntie Bev and she helps Keith realise that people prefer choosing the kind of people they want to be themselves. Puppy Fat is funny, moving, hugely entertaining and handles widespread teenage anxieties with skill and humour. --Tamsin Palmer