View source for The Mood Hoover by Paul Brown and Rowena Blyth

{{infobox2
|title=The Mood Hoover
|sort=Mood Machine
|author=Paul Brown and Rowena Blyth
|reviewer=Sue Magee
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=A slightly weak story line but great illustrations with lots to chat about on most pages.
|rating=3.5
|buy=Maybe
|borrow=Yes
|pages=32
|publisher=Fourth Wall Publishing
|date=March 2016
|isbn=978-1910851135
|website=
|video=
|aznuk=1910851132
|aznus=1910851132
|cover=1910851132
}}

No one could ever have confused Stan with a sunbeam.  He was mischievous (well, personally, I'd have said 'unpleasant') and he had a secret: an invention, in fact.  He'd created a machine which could suck up anything which was happy or fun and it was called 'the mood hoover'.  His sister's bedroom was the first place he put the machine through its paces and within a matter of moments all the girly niceness had been replaced by dull, grey ordinariness.  It didn't just work in confined spaces either: the couple admiring a rainbow were surprised to find the vivid colours turned to dullness.  You don't want to know what he got up to in the zoo...

No one seemed to be able to stop him and it wasn't just colours.  There was the little boy's ice cream, the glorious music at the concert hall and the zebra's stripes.  Stan and his machine seemed destined to go on forever until he spotted a young girl blowing a ''HUGE'' pink bubble with her bubble gum whilst she sat on the bus.  All the other passengers were looking on very disapprovingly but the girl didn't care: she was a girl after Stan's own heart.  They both got off at the park where Stan spotted a courting couple and immediately reached for the mood hoover: such happiness couldn't be allowed to continue!  But the machine wouldn't start up: could it be clogged up?  Sam had been working it pretty hard, you know.

Annoyingly there was even more work for the machine to do: Stan and the girl were surrounded by beautiful, fluttering butterflies.  Of course, Stan hated butterflies, but still the machine wouldn't start and nothing he did could make it work, even setting the machine to maximum.  Then the girl offered Stan a lolly - and the machine exploded covering them both with all the loveliness that Sam had been hoovering up.  Somehow everything was changed.

We've all known surly, difficult boys (and girls) who don't seem to realise that making other people unhappy won't actually make them any happier.  It's a phase they go through and usually they grow out of it.  ''The Mood Hoover'' gives a gentle hint that it needn't actually be that way, but whether or not a young boy is likely to feel that a young girl (even one capable of blowing such a massive pink bubble) would be the answer to their problems is debatable.  Whatever: suspend disbelief and enjoy the fun of the story and Rowena Blyth's lovely illustrations, which are rather stronger than the story behind them.  On a lot of the pages there are all sorts of extras which you'll spot on a second or third reading.  Watch the guage on the side of the mood machine and smile at the newspaper board!  It's silly fun and I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.

If this book appeals then we think that you might also enjoy [[Manfred The Baddie by John Fardell]]. 


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[[Category:Paul Brown]]
[[Category:Rowena Blyth]]