"Go!!!” I yelled at my little brother, then I grabbed the broom and stuck it down the toilet, trying to get it to go down the drain and up into the neighbours’ bathroom. “You’ll see, when they notice our broom-monster, they’ll be scared to death, and they won’t want to come and live in the apartment next to ours anymore!”

The apartment next to that of the Monelli family, on the fifth floor of an elegant condominium, is suddenly put up for sale. The news fills the children of the Monelli house, two brothers and a sister, with excitement and they urgently convene a secret meeting in their Indian tent. They have to come up with a plan that allows them to choose their new neighbours and send the unwelcome ones in flight.

• Illustrations also by Marco Cattaneo.