posted on 26 Aug 2020

Molly and the Bog Sprogs by Lee Thomas, illustrated by Raluca Farcas

Molly has an unusual physical distinction – her hair is made of real snakes! She goes to Monster School with her best friend who is a werewolf and the school staff includes vampires, ghouls and trolls so she isn’t that different.

The problem is that she isn’t quite ‘monsterish’ enough to make her scary to ordinary children who often laugh at her. She also finds it difficult to live happily alongside so many different snake personalities who conspire to make her life difficult. Rather like mischievous sisters, they enjoy being noisy, playing tricks and being generally annoying.   They even threaten her chances in winning the annual school talent contest because they will not co-operate when she tries to play the ukulele. Luckily her friend Wolfboy Jack is at hand to help out and teases the snakes into a massive ponytail. 

But this is not a solution so Molly has to do some hard thinking in preparation for the following year. This time Cyclops Sam offers to help by hypnotising them, but still no luck. Her final attempt is to get advice from Tim the Sphinx who comes up with the excellent idea of starting from what the snakes enjoy – building on the positive aspects of their relationship with Molly and sharing their talents to work as an effective team.   

This is an engaging picture book with plenty of opportunities for cross curricular extension activities with young children. They will enjoy inventing their own snake characters, drawing their own monsters and thinking about what they might be able to do if they had a headful of snakes. It might also be a fruitful experience to explore the myth of Medusa which perhaps inspired the author.   

You need to read this for yourself to enjoy the happy ending and to appreciate the thread of riotous humour that runs through the compelling story enhanced with distintive illustrations.

Karen Argent

August 2020