A Robot Squashed My Teacher is the brilliantly illustrated, laugh-out-loud, wacky adventure by Pooja Puri, the sequel to the Marcus Rashford Bookclub Selected book A Dinosaur Ate My Sister.

Before you start reading, there are a few things you should know: 1. I, Esha Verma, am a genius inventor extraordinaire. 2. I like lists. 3. I did not mean to turn my teacher into a pigeon. Some things just can’t be helped.

Esha Verma, her snotty apprentice Broccoli and his secretly cunning pet tortoise have a dream. They are going to win the legendary Brain Trophy - the ultimate inventing prize. This year’s entry: The RoarEasy - a gadget that lets the user speak to animals.

But when Esha’s arch-nemesis, fellow inventor Ernie, lands her in detention, the RoarEasy malfunctions and suddenly Monsieur Crepe is TRANSFORMED INTO A PIGEON.

Luckily for Esha, she knows exactly what she needs to repair her invention and where to find it: locked away in the mysterious Central Research Laboratories.

She, Broccoli, Archibald and Monsieur Crepe will have to go undercover and break into the labs before the competition to return Monsieur Crepe to his human form. And with Ernie following them, determined to foil their plans as they face giant robots, killer plants, shrinking machines, robo-spiders, clouds that make you float and terrifying twisters, they’re going to need all the help they can get to get out of this wacky pickle.