"Big George and the Seventh Knight," Eric Pringle, Bloomsbury; 2002; 200 pp.

Hear ye, hear ye, it is the Year of our Lord 1305, and we are about to listen to a medieval tale with a difference. To be sure it has -- as is customary in such tales -- its fair share of cruel lords, scheming underlings and jousting knights. But this is no ordinary account of life in the Middle Ages: In the starring roles are Walter, a trainee-knight-turned-outlaw who can't ride or joust, and a grolyhoomp called Big George.

Grolyhoomp? No, that isn't outdated medieval lingo; it's just the author's crazy idea of what a big guy from another planet should be called. And when we say big, we mean big: He's the height of several large trees stood one on top of the other. And he has blue and green hair. The grolyhoomp is in the middle of a 900-year-long sleep when he is rudely awakened by our wannabe knight who drops in on him -- quite literally.