{"id":33385,"date":"2025-07-22T08:00:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T08:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=33385"},"modified":"2025-07-21T17:02:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T17:02:06","slug":"jamie-smarts-max-chaffy-what-a-delicious-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2025\/07\/22\/jamie-smarts-max-chaffy-what-a-delicious-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamie Smart\u2019s Max & Chaffy: What a Delicious Discovery!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Jamie Smart<\/strong>, and coloured by Emily Kimbell<\/strong> (David Fickling Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-78845-345-5 (PB)<\/p>\n

Laced with cheerful welcoming charm by cartoonist, comics artist and novelist Jamie Smart, Max & Chaffy<\/strong> books for younger readers (five when this one comes out and augmented online by www.findchaffy.com) hark back to more traditional times and fare. Initially introduced in Welcome to Animal Island<\/strong>, little Max<\/em> moved to a new home in a lighthouse and made many amazing friends like Orlando<\/em>, Crumbs<\/em>, Moose<\/em>, Pedalo<\/em> and especially a strange little creature called Chaffy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The tiny fluffbundle has mismatched ears and was easily confused: constantly getting lost and needing Max and the reader\u2019s help to be where it belongs. The reason for getting misplaced so much was and is a desire to locate other unique-unto-themselves Chaffys (as seen in follow-up fables The Great Cupcake Mystery!<\/strong>, Search for the Ice Chaffy!<\/strong> and Hunt for the Pirate\u2019s Gold!<\/strong>): a desire magnified once the soon-to-be-inseparable pair joined the Official Chaffy Finding Club\u2026<\/p>\n

Unlike Smart\u2019s multi award-winning comics offerings (Bunny vs. Monkey<\/strong>, Looshkin – the Adventures of the Maddest Cat in the World!!<\/strong>, Fish Head Steve!<\/strong>, Corporate Skull<\/strong>, Space Raoul<\/strong>, and many brilliant strips for The Beano<\/strong>, Dandy <\/strong>and others) or his illustrated kids novels like the Flember<\/strong> quartet, Max & Chaffy<\/strong> adventures are crafted for early readers, offering strong directed stories laced with interactive pages, with participation an integral part of the storytelling. The most engaging of these page games are recurring Search & Find tableaux – just like Where\u2019s Wally?<\/strong> – cunningly combined with grouping\/collecting moments as they search for new specimens of Chaffy, all offering flavours of Pok\u00e9mon<\/strong> and echoes of Mr. Men<\/strong> whenever they find and befriend one.<\/p>\n

Joyous, inclusive, accepting and particularly appetising, this outing sees our tiny tot stars initially doing something other than seeking new Chaffys – all with a list of identifying characteristics – a bit later, but opens with them soundly asleep in the Lighthouse… until a colossal explosion wakes them up in a hurry!<\/p>\n

The detonation is at the bakery where Crumbles<\/em>\u2019 lives; caused by her latest recipe going awfully wrong. In fact, all the Chaffy\u2019s efforts at cooking are misfiring, and have never really been right ever since she left baking school. Crumbles also really misses her old baking partner Sprinkles<\/em>…
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\nMax sincerely wants to help and is even more determined once he learns Sprinkles now lives on another island…<\/p>\n

Resolved to reunite the cookery champions, Max asks grumpy Captain Foghorn<\/em> to ferry them over, and when he reuses gets a lift in Orlando Pig<\/em>\u2019s new Hot Air Balloon. Scarily, it almost doesn\u2019t make it, but eventually everyone alights safely on \u2018Food Island\u2019<\/em>, eager for fun, tasty treats and possibly new Chaffies for Max\u2019s book. Sadly, as Mayor Chomp Chomp<\/em> explains, they have arrived in the middle of a culinary crisis. The Grand Food Festival has just begun, but in every specialised region, recipes are going wrong and all the new dishes devised are inedible!<\/p>\n

Max naturally offers to investigate as he, Crumbles and Chaffy search for Sprinkles, and soon their trek takes them to \u2018Pasta Hills!\u2019 <\/em>where very upset Pasta Pete<\/em> explains how nothing has the right texture or taste anymore. This sends Chaffy into a finding frenzy that only ends when he finds an undiscovered Burger Chaffy<\/em> adrift in the land of spaghettis, cheesy sauces and meatballs…
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\nGradually the pattern repeats across the island, with our explorers locating never-before-catalogued Chaffy pals in \u2018Burger Valley!\u2019<\/em>, \u2018Veggie Park!\u2019<\/em>, \u2018Sushi Land\u2019 <\/em>and \u2018Bakersville\u2019<\/em>, inspiring brand new taste and flavour combinations before ultimately reuniting and similarly reinvigorating the baking partnership of Sprinkles and Crumbles. Max can\u2019t decide what\u2019s best: wonderful new food or more Chaffies for his book. Actually, of course he can…
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\nThe fun is followed by a round of exotic fusion foods for all, and supplemented by more things to do, beginning with a bonus feature where Sprinkles asks readers to search for his misplaced ingredients (with answers kindly provided…)<\/p>\n

Exuberant, enticing, eminently palatable and remarkably re-readable, this is another must-have treat of no kid of any age could possibly resist.<\/p>\n

Text and illustrations \u00a9 Fumboo Ltd. 2025. All rights reserved.
\nMax & Chaffy:<\/strong> What a Delicious Discovery! <\/strong>will be released on August 14th<\/sup> 2025 and is available for pre-order now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jamie Smart, and coloured by Emily Kimbell (David Fickling Books) ISBN: 978-1-78845-345-5 (PB) Laced with cheerful welcoming charm by cartoonist, comics artist and novelist Jamie Smart, Max & Chaffy books for younger readers (five when this one comes out and augmented online by www.findchaffy.com) hark back to more traditional times and fare. Initially introduced … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Jamie Smart\u2019s Max & Chaffy: What a Delicious Discovery!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[291,191,42,125,97,225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activity-book","category-adventure","category-best-of-british","category-humour","category-kids-all-ages","category-mystery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-8Gt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33390,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33385\/revisions\/33390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}