Just So Stories

Harper Collins Australia

Watch Mikey talk about the origins of Rene & Glumfoot (and in particular The Rambler’s Curse)

Rene & Glumfoot in The Thieves Beneath the Floorboards

The Café at the Edge of the Woods #3

November 2026

• Imprint: HarperCollins GB
• ISBN: 9780008808402

Rene & Glumfoot are back in their third picture book which is once again filled with quirky characters, hilarious happenings and slightly revolting stuff – which is, of course, why we love them! Rene believes the cafe has an infestation of mice who ‘will do their business in the rice‘ and she tries many weird and wacky means of catching the little beggars.

When none of those work she comes up with her own and in the middle of the night – wham!!! she manages to catch a whole bunch of – ummmm, not mice. Introducing rare and thought-to-be-extinct creatures called bear-me-pigs which Glumfoot identifies immediately.

Rene is distraught when she realises she has inadvertently built her beloved cafe on top of the bear-me-pigs’ burrow and prepares to demolish it or leave or both. But a happy compromise is reached and it works to the advantage of both!

I still don’t know why I was never sent the first in this terrific series but I do know that I loved the second one and was excited to see these! Fab fun for kiddos looking for more sophisticated and subtle picture books!

Rene & Glumfoot in The Rambler’s Curse

October 2026

• Imprint: HarperCollins GB
• ISBN: 9780008808501

And now for the Rambler’s Curse which is more your graphic novel and so more of what we’ve already come to love. The cafe is flourishing and Rene is relishing her privacy (from other humans) which is, as it turns out, more an escape as she carefully conceals a secret. But her peaceful life – well, it’s all relative isn’t it? After all, it can be peaceful in a way if you’re well used to wizards, ogres, dragons, bear-me-pigs, and other assorted weird creatures – is disrupted and threatened when a stray human turns up one night during a storm. What follows is almost a blueprint of what Rene has feared. People! PEOPLE!! start finding their way to the woods and to her cafe because of that rambler’s review of her wonderful cooking. But it gets worse than that because it suddenly seems like the entire existence of the cafe is under threat when a mysterious cloaked person on a motor bike is trying to steal the Ogre’s gold. That gold funds the cafe so no gold will mean no cafe. At the same time, the five large rocks out back of the cafe, suddenly disappear or so it seems to Rene. In fact, they have trundled themselves off on a mission so to speak. There’s a lot going on in and around the woods in fact.

Rene and Glumfoot try to bamboozle potential hordes of humans in finding their way. The rambler Bernald Crotchet is awfully annoying but as the plot progresses we come to realise that he’s not the gold thief.

The wizard, Oarlock, seems to have a staff that’s only good for one spell and that one can cause some real problems. Then there’s the trampled fairyshroom ring, the magical enchantment and barrier to unwanted intruders to the woods – broken!! What are those stones up to? And why is there a strange little rock person waddling about? How can Rene stop all her dreams and the success of the cafe from unravelling, and at the same time protect her new friends from the monstrous humans?

It takes a lot of whizzing through mysterious portals, a wrecked plane suspended in trees being not the most secure place to be, a bunch of humans turning out not to be exactly monsters and a little rock person finding his long-lost throne and his flaming crown before we discover the real culprit in the story. And really, is that culprit a bad person?

This is the first in a trilogy Mikey explains and it’s going to be loads more adventure, hilarity and thoughtful reflection ahead as the reader weighs up all these various factors and the interconnectedness of all.

In the meantime I would personally love some bear-me-pigs to move in under our floorboards – we would definitely appreciate some tidying up of crumbs and bits&pieces.

Your capable readers will love these characters and will particularly enjoy this extended story, once again of course with Mikey’s fab illustrations – also, the chapter headings are just delightful!! These get a very fulsome 5 🧌👩🏼‍🍳🧙‍♂️👺🪨rating for readers from around 8 years upwards.