Recommended by Stephen L Holland, Guest Editor, June 2021:
.... deliciously witty and astutely observed....Allison is Britain’s most communicative cartoonist, bringing everyone and everything vividly alive! The Bad Machinery series is ten totally self-contained volumes star six friends with a passion for mystery who begin aged pre-teen then wind up as early teens.
Bad Machinery Volume 1 - Pocket Edition The Case of the Team Spirit Synopsis
The Case of the Team Spirit introduces readers to Jack, Linton, Sonny, Shauna, Charlotte, and Mildred: six kids navigating the treacherous waters of school and adolescence while also exploring the strange mysteries that abound in their peculiar English town of Tackleford.
Jack, Linton, and Sonny look for cures to their football club's unexplainable woes, while Shauna, Charlotte, and Mildred try to find a way for compassion and justice to triumph in the face of die-hard sports fanaticism. But all of them should probably be more concerned with keeping on the good side of their history teacher, Mr. Bough. That is, if he has a good side...
Allison is a triple threat: he plots deftly, draws confidently, and writes dead-on adolescent dialogue. Set in a grammar school in a British working-class community, this first book in his Bad Machinery series--originally published as a webcomic--has three earnest boys wing against three sharp-tongued girls to solve mysteries. The framing story concerns a Russian owner of a U.K. football team trying to bully an elderly homeowner to sell her house; as the title hints, supernatural elements surface, too. There's plenty of cynical commentary about British consumer culture, and the students' sardonic banter provides a constant obbligato. About her mother's boyfriend's Velvet Underground albums, Shauna yawns, It's nice that you gave some money to people just playing music for the first time. Allison's adults are sympathetically drawn, too--even the archvillain has a human side. A wry glossary defines British terms ( Nuffink: The way you say 'nothing' if you were dragged up rather than brought up ), but can't begin to illuminate the arcane mysteries of the British football-industrial complex; readers are on their own there. Dark, fast-paced, and riotously funny entertainment. Ages 10-up. (Mar.) Publishers Weekly US
