- Comedy
- Murray and Bun collection
- Ages 5–8
Murray and Bun
Part of the collectionMurray and Bun→Big, silly, page-turning comedy adventures for six-plus readers finding their feet: high energy, high picture support, and a warm cat-and-rabbit double act.
- Books5
- Arcs1
- Span2021–2026
- StatusOngoing
The series
At a glance.
An author-illustrated early-reader comedy series by Adam Stower (HarperCollins Children's Books). Murray the cat and Bun the rabbit share a garden and a cat flap that a wizard named Fumblethumb accidentally enchanted, so instead of the garden it opens onto ADVENTURE: a Viking world of trolls, a medieval castle, the high seas, a haunted world of ghosts, uncharted wilds. Each book runs the same reliable engine, a fish-out-of-water duo dropped into a themed world at the highest energy level the story can hold, and plays the displacement for laughs. The prose load is light and the visual support is high throughout, one step up from Narwhal and Jelly, so the books work for children who are only just reading alone. The friendship is real underneath the chaos, and the books stand alone.
Big, silly, page-turning comedy adventures for six-plus readers finding their feet: high energy, high picture support, and a warm cat-and-rabbit double act.
Fully episodic, each book drops the duo into a new themed world and stands completely alone, so any order works. Publication order (Viking, Knight, Pirate, Ghosthunter, Explorer) is pleasant but not required.
One arc
The shape of the series.
- IStandalone collection arcLow sensitivity
Through the magic cat flap
Five self-contained comedy adventures in which a magic cat flap drops a cat and a rabbit into a new themed world each time.
The whole series works as one standalone collection rather than a continuing saga. Every book uses the same premise, the enchanted cat flap opens onto a fresh themed world, and lets Stower play a different set of tropes for comedy: Viking trolls, medieval quests, a pirate treasure hunt, a genuine spooky mystery, and an explorers' expedition. Book to book the register shifts slightly, the pirate outing is the most suspenseful, the ghosthunter the scariest (though the comedy stays too loud to frighten), and the explorer the most accessible, but the format, the light prose load and the heavy page-by-page illustration never change. The through-line is the friendship: overconfident Murray and cautious Bun, bickering their way through daft peril and coming home from every world knowing something they didn't before.
Fit check
Right for your reader?
Where the series lands by age
- 1
- 3
- 5
- 7
- 9
- 11
- 13
- 15
- 17
- 19
- Best fit · 5–8
- Read aloud · 5–7
- Independent · 6–9
Reluctant-reader friendliness
High
Read-aloud quality
Strong
Adult crossover
Low
Grows with the reader
Not especially
Sensitivity envelope
Low overall, and consistent.
Where it sits
In conversation with other series.
About the author