Kids into books: Stella Steller in Horace Snatchfat & The Aliens

Author: Simon Grant

Age: 6-9 years

Illustrator: Kate Wells

Publisher: Breaksea Productions, $14.95

Stella Steller liked finding weird things. Mostly they were alive, and mostly they lived underneath things or inside something.

Sometimes, if they were small enough, she brought them back to live with her for a while. She would take them up the rickety stairs to her room which poked out of the top of the house like a crow's nest, and she would make a home for them out of things like shells, or plasticine, or papier mache.

Then she would do something rather extraordinary: she would learn their language. This was very difficult, especially with things like snails or starfish which kept mostly to themselves and didn't seem to talk much.

But Stella Steller was an expert at decoding messages that no one else understood.