Gwinny's cake, by Ailse Finnie (age 7) Below: the cake when invisible

Caspar, Johnny and Gwinny live in a house with their mother, their new stepfather and stepbrothers Malcolm and Douglas. But unfortunately they don't get on well and they nickname the stepfather the Ogre. The Ogre doesn't like them either and he buys Johnny and Malcolm a chemistry set each to keep them quiet.

Unfortunately the chemistry sets have a disastrous effect and the first thing that went wrong was they made this flying mixture and they all went flying around, because they were competing with each other to see who could come up with something first, and they came up with the same mixture. They get into lots more disasters. Their toffee bars come to life and keep trying to climb downstairs, and Malcolm changes colour, and they let the bath overflow at a party.

Johnny is so annoyed with the Ogre that he creates false evidence of his own murder and tries to frame the Ogre. But the last straw is when Sally, their mother, runs away.

The Ogre in a strop, by Duncan Finnie (age 5)

They find out that if they're going to get rid of all these disasters they're going to have to get on with each other and get on with the Ogre to get everything back together.

The last disaster is when a chemical creates thugs in the supermarket carpark and they all have to work together to fight them.

It was really funny, and a good book. I thought it was really funny when Caspar sat in the car inventing great-aunts all over the country, and when Gwinny said, when two of the boys had swopped bodies, "I knew something had gone wrong when you started tidying up."

I would recommend this book to other children, I think between the ages of 9 to 11. The characters of the children were very real, and I could understand why they were doing what they were doing. It shows what can happen if you don't get on with your step-parents. Magic chemistry sets might come to life all around you.

I would definitely read more of Diana Wynne Jones's books. The only thing I wish is that it was a bit longer, because it was really funny.

Macmillan first published The Ogre Downstairs in 1974. The editions I've seen are the Puffin ones which reprinted this edition. The new one (1996) is again Macmillan, and this is the one that goes for "disco club" instead of Discotheque, and the sillier updatings.

The original version was printed in Linotype Juliana, which was the font of all magic to me as a child. It had vinyl as the medium of the music, which suffered much more at the hands of children: it got dusty and had diamond playback needles carelessly dropped into grooves and was generally more messy. I can't believe that someone as observationally astute as DWJ would put in tapes - the correct medium now would be CDs which need only a wipe if grubby. Why "update" to tapes and try to make them as funny as vinyl? More editorial tone-deafness is exhibited over the Ogre's taste in music. In the original version, the children conclude that his low forehead indicates a contemptible taste for commercial pop. This is now "classical music" - a nonsense when that genre is famously highbrow.

The new version has a crass bubbling purple test tube on the front, is printed on low-quality stock, and has the nonsensical revisions mentioned. A crying shame.

• Diana Wynne Jones in her own words - Interviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller
• Neil Gaiman's thank you poem
• I Blame It On The Parents - Parents and children in the books of Diana Wynne Jones. Article by Chris Hill
• Fire And Hemlock - by Maureen Kincaid Speller
• The Ogre Downstairs - Reviewed by Arwyn Finnie, with illustrations by Ailse and Duncan Finnie
• Rats and Things - Meredith and creepy-crawlies
• Further Along The Bookshelf - Penny Hill's other favourite children's books

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