Grandma and the Angry Octopus (Whatever Next, Grandma!): 3

Grandma is impulsive, bossy and badly dressed, with a passion for brightly-coloured cowboy boots. She gets the wrong end of any stick and stumbles unwittingly into magical adventures.

Her cynical sidekick, Gertrude the cat, gets dragged into all of Grandma’s scrapes whether she likes it or not.

In this story, Grandma and Gertrude come face to face with a giant octopus with a superiority complex on a day out at the seaside, and it is only Grandma’s quick-fire jokes (What do you call a fish with two knees? A tunee fish) that save the pair from a sticky end.

En route to the coast Gertrude makes a desperate break for freedom, and Grandma’s knitting needles cause mayhem on the train. Once on the beach, Grandma almost blinds sunbathers with her dayglo swimsuit and Gertrude gets slathered in smelly suncream.

But there’s magic in the water, as Grandma and Gertrude find they can talk to each other, and Gertrude discovers hidden talents!

After a London comprehensive school education, Alison Grunwald became a reporter on a weekly newspaper, then a freelance local radio journalist. She took time to have four children (including twins) before training as a Relate and Fertility counsellor, then spent ten years as a teaching assistant in primary schools, primarily focusing on early reading and phonics.