Someone was killing the books. Every day a new book was found open in the Library with completely blank pages. No one suspected that the murderer was the evil Zepo Rete who emptied the books at night with a hoover that sucked up all the letters. Then he carried them stealthily to his lair, where he used an incredible word blender to make a magic juice.

In truth, Zepo Rete had always been bad, but he was also stupid and when he realised that books made people smarter he decided to put them in a blender and drink them, thinking that it would make him cleverer.

But books aren’t for drinking, nor are they for chewing. They need to be read and when Zepo Rete started to drink his juice made from books, he filled himself with stories and words that needed to be read. And the words, who were very smart, discovered that they would only be read if they travelled through the body and onto the skin of Zepo Rete, who was transformed into an enormous tattoo filled with thousands of letters.

He used hundreds of soaps and bleaches to try and wash off the words before he realised that the only way to remove them was by reading them. So, even though he didn’t want to read a single word, he had little choice and he read his own skin for weeks on end to get rid of all the books he had killed.

So, was that the end to the mystery of the book murderer? Far from it! Every morning, even today, a new book is found empty in the Library and no one knows why.

Have you figured it out? Yes, it is still Zepo Rete, who continues to hoover up the letters and drink the juice because he discovered that he loved nothing more than reading the books on his skin. Given that he did indeed become smarter, he still empties books every night without getting caught.

Translated by Daisy Millard, Manchester Metropolitan University