Set in 1940s Johannesburg, it explores the innocence of childhood in an adult world of prohibition, superstition, sorcery, divination, child abduction and muti murder. Reminiscent of the memoirs of Alexandra Fuller, Pierre Van Rooyen's writing is filled with adventure, hilarious antics and funfilled characters. Meet Maudie and her brother Tadpole and follow them on a wacky ride, meeting all the zany people that inhabit their world: from Sampson, the family's Zulu housekeeper and the children's substitute mother who tells them sorcerers make them invisible, Babs, the children's alcoholic half-aunt who drives the local breakdown lorry and parachutes from bi-planes, to Mrs Probert, the interfering neighbour who believes the children are being brought up as gutter-snipes. However, danger lurks and when Maudie is kidnapped by a giraff e man because she witnesses a muti murder, Tadpole is the only one who can rescue her.