The Nothing to See Here Hotel
By Steven Butler and Steven Lenton
4/5
()
About this ebook
'Hilariously funny and inventive, and I love the extraordinary creatures and the one thirty-sixth troll protagonist...' Cressida Cowell
'A rip-roaring, swashbuckling, amazerous magical adventure. Comedy Gold.' Francesca Simon
‘This hotel gets five stars from me’ Liz Pichon
'A splundishly swashbungling tale of trolls, goblins and other bonejangling creatures. Put on your wellies and plunge into the strangest hotel you will ever encounter. This is a hotel I hope I never find! Wonderfully, disgustingly funny.' Jeremy Strong
‘What a fun hotel! Book me in immediately!’ Kaye Umansky
Welcome to The Nothing to See Here Hotel! A hotel for magical creatures, where weird is normal for Frankie Banister and his parents who run the hotel.
When a goblin messenger arrives at The Nothing to See Here Hotel, announcing the imminent arrival of the goblin prince Grogbah, Frankie and his family rush into action to get ready for their important guest. But it soon becomes obvious that the Banister family are going to have their work cut out with the demanding prince and his never-ending entourage, especially when it turns out the rude little prince is hiding a secret...
The first book in a fabulously funny series by bestselling author Steven Butler, with a host of whacky characters brought to life with illustration from the wonderful Steven Lenton!
Steven Butler
Steven Butler grew up in Kent, but now lives in London. He is the author of the bestselling The Diary Of Dennis, The Menace and The Wrong Pong, The Nothing to See Here Hotel series and the Spooked series. As well as writing the hit 2015 World Book Day title, World Menace Day, Steven also is the regular host of World Book Day’s The Biggest Book Show on Earth which takes place every year to celebrate the event. Steven is also a successful performer and voice artist. Steven's first novel, The Wrong Pong, was shortlisted for the prestigious Roald Dahl Funny Prize in 2009.
Related to The Nothing to See Here Hotel
Titles in the series (4)
The Nothing to See Here Hotel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Ain't Seen Nothing Yeti! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sea-ing is Believing! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fiend of the Seven Sewers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for The Nothing to See Here Hotel
15 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely loved this fantastical short story! It was so full of imagination and wonder. You learn about Frankie and all of the guests who call this hotel home! You are able to see that they are a family that will fight for each other till the end!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My son absolutely loved it. Perhaps a coffee table book of illustrations would be nice too.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My kids love this. In the vein of Wayside School, silly, over the top, bombastic and entertaining.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Can’t believe this was published. Just terrible. Painful read aloud.
Book preview
The Nothing to See Here Hotel - Steven Butler
NOT ALL OLD LADIES ARE NICE
Let’s talk about grandmas . . .
In storybooks, grandmas or grannies or nannies are sweet and short dumplings of fun that give you extra pocket money when your mum and dad aren’t looking, and need to be rescued from the occasional big bad wolf.
BUT . . . this isn’t a storybook. This is really-real life, and my grandma isn’t anything like that. My granny would terrify the big bad wolf. She’d beat him to a pulp. She’d gulp him down, chewing and slobbering as she did so, and belch out his bones before breakfast.
Oh . . . I should probably tell you . . .
My granny is a TROLL.
A mean one.
THE NOTHING TO SEE HERE HOTEL
Phew! Now I’ve told you the truth about my granny, the rest of what I’m about to tell you won’t sound quite so bonkers.
My name is Frankie, by the way . . . Frankie Banister. Hello!
I know you’re probably already thinking that I’ve had my brains scrambled or I’m loop-de-loop crazy – a troll for a granny?! But we’ve only just started: keep reading and I’ll explain everything, I swear. You’ll begin to believe me in no time . . . my granny really is a hulking, stinky great troll, and not a single word of what I’m about to tell you is a lie.
Go on, just a few more pages . . .
Ready?
Here we go . . .
MY GRANNY THE TROLL
About a hundred years ago, back in the olden days when people wore tall hats and everything was in black and white, my great-great-great-grandad, Abraham Banister, went for his usual morning walk along the beach and KAPOW! he changed the history of our family FOREVER.
Right out at the far end of the seafront, near the rocks, my gramps spotted something strange. Something VERY strange and VERY large.
According to my dad, Grandad Abraham was a collector of rare plants and animals. He used to travel the world, searching for weird and exotic things . . . so what he spotted on that black-and-white morning must have made his curly moustache twistier than EVER.
Abe spotted a troll girl (a trollette) doing her laundry in the open mouth of a huge sewer pipe and having a good old sing-song to herself.
You guessed it: that troll girl was my great-great-great-granny, Regurgita Glump, and before anyone could scream, ‘NO! WAIT, ABE! SHE’S HIDEOUS!’ the two of them fell madly in love, ran off and got married in a proper slobberchopsy troll ceremony down in the sewers under Brighton high street.
DON’T PANIC! The rest of the story isn’t all gross and lovey-docious, I promise.
Fast-forward a hundred years and here I am: Frankie Banister, the newest member of the bunch.
You can imagine our family tree is a crazy one. It’s dotted with trolls and humans and harpies, with the occasional witch and puddle-nymph thrown into the mix. My uncle Stodger is a bogrunt!
My dad, Bargeous, is what’s known as a halfling, and my mum, Rani, is completely human, so that makes me a quarterling, I suppose. I know that I’m one thirty-sixth troll.
You probably wouldn’t notice I wasn’t fully human at first glance. My hair is always messy and it hides my pointy ears most of the time, so the only thing that really gives it away is the colour of my eyes. Just like Dad and all my other relatives going back up the family tree to Granny Regurgita, mine are copper-coloured, like shiny pennies. It’s the first sign of having troll blood.
Anyway, I really want to tell you all about where I live.
One hundred years after my great-great-great-grandparents built it, my family still live and work in The Nothing To See Here Hotel. It’s the best secret holiday destination for magical creatures in the whole of England. You weren’t expecting that, were you?
Poor old Grandad Abraham popped his clogs years and years before I was even born, but Granny Regurgita is still about. Trolls live hundreds of years longer than people.
My granny calls herself the manager of the hotel, but she hardly ever leaves her bed, so me, Mum and Dad do all the hard work. Every day we run around like human bumper cars, trying to keep a bunch of magical creatures from wrecking the place. Weird is normal to the Banister family.
Are you starting to believe me? Ha! I thought you might . . .
I could spend hours and hours telling you about the hotel and describing what it looks like, but you’d probably get super bored and throw this book across your bedroom, screaming, ‘I HATE FRANKIE BANISTER!’ so here’s a map instead. Maps are WAY more fun and you’ll find out loads more later in the story.
I know what you’re thinking . . .
How can the hotel be that much of a secret if it’s so MASSIVE? Anyone with half a brain would spot something strange going on in seconds if they walked past. But that’s where a little bit of troll magic comes in . . . You see, the front of the hotel looks just like any other you might find by the seaside and that’s the only part that human eyes can see, so no one suspects a thing! The rest of the hotel is enchanted by Granny Regurgita and is completely invisible.
The only time there’s ever a clue that a huge, magical hotel is standing in plain sight at the end of Brighton seafront is when a seagull flies into one of the invisible towers. It’s pretty funny. If someone was looking hard enough, they might spot a seagull come swooping over the town, heading for the sea, and WALLOP! The poor bird stops in mid-air, then squawks off in a whirl of feathers, looking more confused than a T-rex in a tutu.
But no one ever notices. All the people that come and go along the seafront are way too busy buying ice creams and splashing about to pay any attention to surprised seagulls. That’s how the hotel has managed to stay secret ever since Abe and Regurgita opened it all those years ago.
We also use a couple of crafty tricks to stop any human tourists from wandering in by mistake. First of all, the visible part of the hotel is always kept shabby and old-looking. The windows