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Giants live on top of Mount Grumble, hidden from humans below. But not all of them are giant-like. Muncle Trogg is so small that he’s laughed at by the others for being human-sized. Fed up, he decides to take a look at the Smallings that he’s meant to look like. But what he discovers is very surprising!

Winner of The Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition 2010.

An affectionate and charming upside down fairytale, this is the magical story of the residents of Misty Mountain and the tiny giant who saves the day.

Exciting and laugh-out-loud funny, and filled with joyful illustrations.

First in a series of adventures starring Muncle, Emily and Snarg, the dragon.

Perfect for readers aged 7+

For anyone who loved Cressida Cowell’s, How to Train Your Dragon.

‘Ma!’ shrieked Muncle.  ‘Gritt’s upside-downing me.’ 

        The only light in the Troggs’ underground home came from Ma’s fire.  Now it threw the shadow of a larger-than-life Gritt on to the rocky wall, with a much-too-small Muncle dangling helplessly from his hand.

        ‘Ma!’ Muncle yelled again.  His shadow swung wildly to and fro. 

        This sort of thing made him feel smaller than ever.  At twelve he should have been able to stand up for himself.  But at the moment he couldn’t stand up at all.  Gritt had him firmly by the ankles.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if Gritt had been his older brother, but Gritt was four years younger.

        ‘Ma!’  He was going to be sick if he stayed upside down much longer.  It was a good thing Pa wasn’t home yet.  Pa always took Gritt’s side.  Gritt was the sort of son a giant could be proud of.

        Ma Trogg peered through the cloud of steam above her cauldron.  She was a handsome giantess with an enviable number of bristly warts, but her broad yellow-toothed smile was too often clouded by an anxious frown.  It upset Muncle that she still had to worry about him when she had two younger ones to look after. 

‘Gritt!’ she roared.  ‘Put your brother down at once.’

        ‘But you told me to play with him till breakfast.’

        ‘I didn’t mean you should use him as a toy.’

        ‘He likes it,’ said Gritt.

        ‘I do not!’ squealed Muncle.

        ‘Don’t you?  Oh.  All right.’  Gritt dropped Muncle as quickly as he’d picked him up. 

        Muncle’s smallness did give him one advantage:  he was unusually agile.  The moment Gritt let go, Muncle somersaulted in mid air, landing on his bottom rather than his head.  It still hurt.  If anyone else had been dropped on their bottom they would have bounced, but where every other giant had rolls of comfortable fat, Muncle had only skin and bone.

        He wasn’t bad looking.  He had an excellent complexion: coarse grey skin dotted with sparse hairy warts.  He had Pa’s bushy eyebrows and fleshy nose.  He had Ma’s bulging eyes and uneven teeth.  It was just Muncle’s size that was wrong.   But his small size was a huge problem.  All his life he’d struggled to find a way of fitting into a world where he so obviously didn’t fit.  And now time was running out.  In three days he would be leaving school.  If he couldn’t find a job he was capable of doing by then, his prospects were bleak.

        ‘We can’t wait for your pa any longer,’ said Ma, clattering wooden bowls on to the low stone table, ‘or you’ll be late for school.  Come and eat, both of you.’

        She unstrapped the wicker baby-basket from her back and set it on a stool beside the table.  Flubb grabbed her leather bottle and glugged the fungus porridge down eagerly. 

        ‘You can almost see her growing,’ Muncle thought enviously.

        He pulled up his bracken-filled cushion, not just because his bruised bottom felt tender, but because he needed the thick cushion in order to reach the table. 

        Everyone else sat on the bare, rocky floor and they all drank their porridge from bowls, large ones for Gritt and Ma and a much smaller one for Muncle.  He was glad that Ma had stopped trying to make him grow by feeding him the same amount as Gritt.  He’d hated the constant reminders that his appetite, like everything else about him, was too small.