Gary's Garden

Story

Gary doesn’t do much to his garden. It is overgrown and neglected, and so the garden creatures take the opportunity to create absolute havoc. There is a tap dancing spider, a loincloth-clad warrior ladybird, a worm that thinks he’s a caterpillar, and a whole host of birds on the rampage.

Why we chose it

Gary’s Garden was a huge favourite with our Extreme Reading group who loved the surreal adventures of the birds, beasts and bugs who run wild in the garden.

Where it came from

Gary Northfield is an author and comic strip artist. He has written for The Dandy, National Geographic Kids, and Horrible Histories magazine, but is perhaps best known for his Beano strip Derek the Sheep. He loves the Asterix books and was inspired by Neal Layton’s Mammoth Academy on Holiday (2008). In 2017, he and his partner launched Bog Eyed Books, a publisher for British comic books.

Where it went next

Gary’s Garden was nominated for the British Comic Awards in 2015. After first appearing in 2012 as a strip in The Phoenix. The book was created in 2014

Associated stories

Northfield’s Julius Zebra series has been translated into many languages and in 2017 Julius Zebra – Rumble with the Romans! won the Spellbinding book award, voted for by children. His publishing company Bog Eyed Books has published his own Derek the Sheep stories, along with a number of books by other authors, including Welcome to Oddleigh (Tor Freeman, 2018) and Useleus (Alexander Matthews and Wilbur Dawbarn, 2017).