Molly Moon

Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism is a book about a British preteen living in a terrible orphanage. Just before her only friend is adopted and moves to America without saying goodbye, she finds a rare book on hypnotism. She heads off to America to find her friend, hypnotizing people all the way. Meanwhile, a sinister wanna-be hypnotist stalks her...and he is willing to do anything to get the book in his hands.

Followed by four sequels, Molly Moon Stops the World, Molly Moon's Time-Traveling Adventure, Molly Moon, Micky Minus, and the Mind Machine, and Molly Moon and the Morphing Mystery.

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These books show examples of

• Alpha Bitch: Hazel.
• Bank Robbery
• Beyond the Impossible: During the bank heist, Molly hypnotises an iris scanner.
• Big Applesauce: Molly goes to New York to find Rocky.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: While most of Molly's victims never stray beyond Hypno Fool, there are instances where some of them border on this trope. Many of the characters hypnotized by the villains play the trope straight.
• Canon Dis Continuity: The reason given that Molly is a more powerful hypnotist than me mother is that her mother is a twin and therefore split her powers with Cornelius. But then in book four, we find out that Molly is in the exact same situation as her mother.
  • In the first book, the password to lock in hypnosis is "perfectly punctual," referenced explicitly because Lucy says it to Molly when she shows up precisely on time. All future books give the password as "perfectly punctually," and the ungrammatical nature of the two words is a plot point.

• Compelling Voice: Anyone who can hypnotize people in this universe has this. It's actually two halves to hypnosis, you can learn to compel by voice or eye contact.
• Charm Person: Molly meets a young actress in the first book that has this. She does it unconsciously, through eye contact, and it's implied that's how she became so famous. Molly ends up doing a hypnosis battle with her.
• Chekhov's Gun: Quite a few; a couple of them are even combined with each other.
• Department of Child Disservices: They don't even exist in the novel, much less help the kids.
• Demoted to Extra: Rocky becomes less significant in the plots as the books go on. This is Lampshaded by Rocky himself in the fourth book (shortly before he is kidnapped and hypnotized by the villain and is forced to use his powers in their service).
• Freudian Excuse: Hazel states the reason she is a bully is because her parents never cared for her even when they were alive.
  • In fact, just about every antagonist in the first book (and several in the later three) turn out to have a Freudian Excuse for their horrible behavior -- most often they're mean because life hasn't treated them well.
• Gambit Pileup: In Molly Moon Stops The World, Molly is sent to stop a ruthless tycoon called Primo Cell from taking over the world with hypnosis. It's revealed towards the end that Cell was himself hypnotized by Cornelius Logan to take over the world for him. It's then revelaed in the next book that Cornelius himself was hypnotized by the Maharaja of Waqt to hypnotize Cell to take over the world for him.
• Good Feels Good: Molly deliberately tries to invoke this trope several times by hypnotizing the villains with freudian excuses into becoming nice and hoping they'll remember the feeling once the hypnosis wears off.
  • The most obvious example of this is Nockman, whose experience with the trope is described in detail in the last part of the first book, and who in the second book is shown to have truly become a kind and loving man.
• Hypno Fool: Not surprisingly, a lot of people end up as this.
• I Have Your Wife: Nockman dognaps Petula and blackmails Rocky and Molly into robbing a bank for him.
• Like Brother and Sister: Molly and Rocky.
• Long-Lost Relative (spoilers for all four books): Molly goes from having no family to discovering her mom (Lucy), dad (Primo Cell), her evil uncle (Cornelius), twin brother (Micky), and half-siblings through adoption (Sinclair and Sally Cell)
• Mind Control: The first book was focused entirely and exclusively on this power. Afterwards, however...
• Non-Human Sidekick: Petula
• New Age Retro Hippie: Forrest
• New Powers as the Plot Demands
• Orphanage of Fear: Hardwick House, at least in the first book. It stops being this after Mrs Trinklebury takes over and renames it "Happiness House."
• Parental Abandonment: subverted in that Primo and Lucy were hypnotized into abandoning Molly
• Shown Their Work: While most of the things that Molly does with hypnotism are flat-out not possible, the author very clearly researched hypnotism while writing the book. The passage in the first book about natural trances is very legit, to the point that the foreshadowing of the concept with Molly's daydreams will automatically show anyone familiar with the field that the author Did The Research. The Rule of Cool takes over shortly afterward, not that that's a bad thing.
• Time Stands Still: If Molly uses hypnosis on a daimond.
• Trigger Phrase: Not surprisingly, given how big a part hypnosis plays in the books, there turn out to be several. The one used most often is "Perfectly Punctual."
• Trademark Favorite Food: Ketchup sandwiches and concentrated orange squash. Many side characters seem to silently find Molly's taste for these rather disgusting.