Hobgoblin and the Stanky Eight

★ 2026 Moonbeam Award Winner: Best Pre-Teen Fantasy

"I loved Hobgoblin and the Stanky Eight. It's super fun, features great characters fighting a heroic, smelly battle, and includes a timely message, too! Long live the Stanky Eight!" -- Rob Harrell, author of Popcorn, Wink, and Monster on the Hill

"The author's ability to craft whole novels thickly strewn with puns, gross substances, and pop-culture references ('I love the smell of sewage in the morning!') remains unexcelled. Positively smellerific." -- Kirkus Reviews

In the funky-smelling follow-up to Hobgoblin and the Seven Stinkers of Rancidia, a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, our pungent protagonists learn that trouncing a tyrant was just the beginning of their fight to protect democracy.

It's been years since Hobgoblin, Niffy the skunk, and the Seven Stinkers became national heroes by saving their proudly putrid nation from Fiddlefart, the wannabe ogre king. With the victory parade still fresh in their minds (and their noses), a new threat has emerged to take the place of the old one. When a radical anti-stink group of masked thugs called the Clean Crew sweeps in with a plot to scrub out Rancidia and capture the Onion Palace, our heroes must form an unlikely coalition to protect their country and once again save their stinky way of life. In this uproarious, adventure-packed adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, Hobgoblin and his friends learn that protecting a democracy isn't a one-off kind of thing--it requires a nonstop, everyday commitment to community, camaraderie, and collaboration. And though it continues the story of reader-favorite characters, Hobgoblin and the Stanky Eight can be enjoyed as its own stinky standalone for readers unfamiliar with the preceding book.

Kyle Sullivan is an award-winning children's book author whose titles have sold more than a half million copies worldwide. Kyle writes middle-grade chapter books, picture books, and board books that appeal to parents, guardians, teachers, and librarians just as much as the young readers in their lives. His titles include the best-selling board books Don't Eat Me, Chupacabra! / ¡No Me Comas, Chupacabra! and Get Dressed, Sasquatch!, the picture books Tonight Is Krampus Night! and Hazel and the Spooky Season, and the middle-grade chapter books Krampus Confidential and Hobgoblin and the Seven Stinkers of Rancidia. Kyle has an MA in English Literature from the University of British Columbia and a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. He lives in Portland, Oregon.