I’ve finished Takeshita Demons and am rewriting the first three chapters of One Weekend with Killiecrankie to feature the hottest new thing in children’s fiction: kangaroos.

Why? Because roos are on the rise! A group of kangaroos is called a “mob” (zombies), they’re mostly active at night (werewolves) and they can swallow their food without chewing (vampires). And that’s not all.

The world does not yet know it, but kangaroos are grosser than zombies, weirder than werewolves and better looking than Edward any day of the year.

Why? Here’s why:

1) Newborn kangaroos are utterly disgusting but all-powerful
A newborn kangaroo climbs into its mother’s pouch when it’s blind, hairless and the size of a jelly bean. Hello super-powers.

2) Kangaroos can disembowel their enemies using only their toenails
Say no more. That’s serious power.

3) Kangaroos don’t fart
A supernatural power we’d all like to have: kangaroos don’t produce methane, which means a) their whizzpoppers don’t stink and b) kangaroos don’t contribute to global warming.

4) A female kangaroo can freeze the development of a fertilized egg until she’s ready to rear another baby.
A great technique for taking over the world. At any one time, a single female kangaroo can be feeding two joeys in her pouch and have a fertilized egg waiting in the wings. Incredibly, Joey Junior will be recieving high-fat milk from nipple A, while Joey Senior gets high-carb milk from nipple B (a supernatural power I neither possess nor desire).

5) A kangaroo weighs nearly 100 kilograms, can leap a 3-metre fence and chonks along at 70 km/h.
Translated, we’re talking a roo who weighs about the same as Muhammad Ali, can jump clean over a regulation-height basketball hoop and is able to outpace a greyhound.

Book shelves, watch out! Readers, be afraid! A new genre is birthing, and though it may be just the size of a jelly bean, it’s set to grow. Roo Fiction is on the rise.

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