The first thing you need to know about this book is that Nan and her grandchildren were not ordinary. In fact they were about as far from ordinary as a person can get!

Yes they lived in a perfectly ordinary house, on a perfectly 

ordinary street, in a perfectly ordinary neighbourhood in London. But the Babbles were far from ordinary.

What made them so strange you might be asking yourself? Well it was their personalities!  When the youngest of the Babble children were still very young, their parents, along with their Nandad, sadly died in a terrible car crash leaving them orphans.

This had greatly affected the children and nowadays they had quite peculiar styles, and even more peculiar personalities! Here is a brief bit of information about each of the children:

The oldest, Ivy, is a lovely young woman aged 21 with a kind face and long brown hair that she keeps tied in two scraggly buns on the top of her hair. She has just finished a degree in fashion at Edinburgh university.

Next was Emmitina: she has mousy brown hair in a shoulder length bob, and a face full of freckles. She has just celebrated her 18th birthday and is headed off to Bath University to study art.

Now we have Dan, a boy aged 15 with short purple hair. He has a social media platform and is becoming pretty successful.

Then comes Bailey, but they all call her Bamby.  She is 12 years old and wears her hair in long, golden brown pig tails. Bamby is always smiling with her face full of freckles, and she LOVES ice cream and cats!!

Next we have the identical quadruplets called, in order of age: Billy, Tilly, Milly and Lily. They all have a shade of light pink hair tied up in adorable pig-tails and turn 9 next month.

Finally, we have Bernard and Amy, the twins. Bernard has short spiky green hair and a malicious smile, Amy has floor length bright red hair and an evil glint in her eye. They are currently 5 years old.

And there you have it; they are the sweet, quite peculiar

children, but I haven’t even covered the half of it yet! Oh and if you are wondering why they all have such brightly coloured hair, that is a whole other story....

Now today (when our story begins) it is the end of the school year and summer is just beginning! The children have not yet finished school. Nan, Emmitina and Ivy are waiting for them in the car park with a special surprise! Here is a bit of information that you need to know about Nan:

Firstly she doesn’t exactly look like your average 

grandparent. Nan has bright pink hair that sticks up with a blue stripe going through it, and sports a tracksuit in the same two colours with the word NaN embellished on the jacket. See, not exactly your average grandparent. Now, back to the story.

Finally, after 15 minutes of waiting, all of the excited children flooded the car park ready to be picked up by loving parents and guardians, for their summer holiday. Suddenly Emmitina spotted their children and they rushed towards them, “Happy holidays!!!” Nan said, picking up Amy and spinning her round in the air.

The quadruplets, along with Bernard and Amy, started jumping for joy. “This holiday is going to be the best holiday ever!!” Bamby cried! 

"Right, let's go!!" Ivy enthused. So they all hopped into their seats, but all of them failed to notice the suitcases in the back of the car...

So Nan drove all the children 'home' but she missed the exit!

"Nan you missed the exit." Ivy quickly told Nan. 

"I know." Nan replied, and the whole car went silent. "We're not going home," Nan said, her excitement growing, "Didn’t you notice the suitcases?" 

"We're going on holiday??" Dan excitedly asked. Nan said nothing. All she did was slyly nod her head. The whole car erupted with screams of joy!!! 

The excitement lasted the whole way to the airport, until Billy asked an important question all of them had forgotten about. "Where are we going?"

"Oh yeah Nan, you forgot to tell us where we are going." Tilly said. 

"Well that's a surprise!!" Nan squeeled, an ever-growing smile stretching further across her face.

"NAN!" They all moaned in unison. After that they carried their suitcases through all the usual airport procedures, that I won't bother boring you with, until finally they boarded the plane.

Now on the plane there was a little incident involving the twins, a dog and the food trolley, but let's not focus on that!

Towards the end of the flight the children realised where they were going. They looked out of the window and, lo and behold thousands of feet below them, lay the beautiful African savanna.

Their excitement grew to a new level that they didn't even know existed!!! So far this was already the best holiday of their lives!!! 

Soon they landed and it was time for the holiday to begin!!! Nan lead them to a hotel where they ate dinner and went to bed. In the morning began their safari!!

The next day alarms woke them all up at 6am sharp, ready to make the most of the day.

They quickly ate breakfast and then followed a guide out into the wilderness. The first animals they saw were zebras. There were hundreds of them!! There they all stood, munching on grass minding their own business, but to the Babbles this was one of the most magical sights in the world!

After seeing the zebras, the tour guide recommended that they find giraffes next. Soon they found some. They were magnificent!

The giraffes towered over them and walked across the plain like giants!! They then went and saw loads of other spectacular animals and overall their first day in Africa was a hit!! What could possibly go wrong on the second??!!

The second day started off just like the first, wake up at 6am, breakfast, but then the first difference is that their tour guide was sick today. This meant that they had to have the grumpy old man guide. 

The second difference is that, unlike their previous tour guide, he was talking about animals, that weren’t even there!!