When Tim’s mum asks him who ate the last slice of cake, he tells her a ninja ate it. When Tim’s dad is missing a hammer, it’s not Tim who took it, it was the astronaut in the garden: he needed it to fix his spaceship. And this time it wasn’t the dog who ate Tim’s homework – it was a giant squid.Not surprisingly, nobody believes Tim.

Because he’s always getting into trouble for lying, Tim decides to own up to all the bad things, even though he didn’t do them. Except when he says he threw pencils at his sleeping grandpa (even though it was a time-travelling monkey) Tim still gets in trouble. He can’t win! How will Tim ever be able to prove he’s not making it all up?

The Boy Who Cried Ninja is a wonderfully imaginative picture book about tall tales and telling the truth, even when nobody believes you. The strange situations and bright, Oliver Jeffers-esque illustrations will delight readers three and up and have them wondering how on earth anyone is going to believe Tim that there’s a pirate in the cupboard.