Title: The Bolds on Holiday (The Bolds #3)
Author: Julian Clary
Illustrator: David Roberts
Publisher: Andersen Press
Genre: Children’s fiction, Humour
Book format: Paperback
Sweet Strawberries: 
Description: The Bolds may look like an ordinary family, but they have a great big secret…
It’s the summer holidays and the Bolds are off to the seaside. But it’s not long before trouble sniffs them out, and one of them goes missing. Can the Bolds come to the rescue and carry on camping?
*Free copy provided by publisher (as part of The Bolds Box Set) for review…
Review: This series is just getting better, ‘The Bolds’ on Holiday’ is such a funny story I couldn’t help but laugh out loud while reading this! The Bolds, a family of hyenas living a normal suburban life while pretending they are humans, are getting ready to go on holiday, bringing along some of their friends, both animal and human. But things aren’t as easy as they first thought and when one of them gets hurt, hiding their true identities might become impossible.
This book is so good and so funny that I couldn’t stop myself from laughing while reading. The first book in the series introduced the characters and how the Bolds first managed to start living life as humans in Teddington. This book picks up some time after the second book ‘The Bolds to the Rescue’ and the Bolds are now established among their animal friends. I love the story in this book, set on a camping holiday you just know there are so many things that can go wrong! I love all the silly things that happen and even something like how the tent was put together had me laughing so much.
Throughout the story which is filled with lots of silly antics, there are also so many jokes told by Mr Bold, with a whole list of them at the end of the book so you can re-read them and tell them to others if you liked them. Considering how silly/cheesy some of these jokes are (Christmas cracker type jokes), I’m pleased to say that they still made me laugh and there were quite a few I’d never heard before. The story has a brilliant ending with something exciting happening in the second half of the book. I won’t say what happens but it’s a brilliant story and has such a great ending that I couldn’t help but smile so much when I finished this.
The story itself is very funny but I do think the illustrations really make this book all the better. There are black, white and grey illustrations throughout the whole book, on almost every double page, with some illustrations appearing on part of a page among the text, while other illustrations take up an entire page. Most pages without illustrations feature a nice border on the edges and with the text being easy to read and not too small it just makes this book feel so easy and fun to read and look at. I just love how all the characters look in the pictures, their funny expressions and their generally funny looks. Sometimes a picture alone makes me laugh which just makes the whole experience of reading this so much more fun.
I would recommend this book to children as well as adults to read. Although aimed at children there are some funny references and jokes that only adults will know. The book works as a stand alone story as all the main characters are introduced, but it’s definitely worth reading the first book, at least, before this one if you can as I think it’s just going to be much more fun if you know all the characters and what’s happened to them beforehand. This was such a funny story and I can’t wait to read the next book in the series!
Have you read any books in The Bolds series? What do you think about animals living as humans? Have you ever had some silly stuff happen to you on holiday? Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂
The Strawberry Post 