In my opinion, the best Pamela Butchart books are the ones Izzy tells herself. Where four friends decide that something ordinary at school is a full emergency.
We have sixteen of her books, and they sit mostly on our funny books for 7 year olds shelf. My five are The Broken Leg of Doom!, The Great Crisp Robbery, There’s a Beast in the Basement!, The Sports Day Chicken and Petunia Perry and the Curse of the Ugly Pigeon.
Three of those are for 7 year olds, one is for a 5 year old and one is for 9 and up, so I’ve put the age with each one.
Which Pamela Butchart book should they read first?
Any of the Izzy books. Each one is its own case, and Izzy mentions the earlier ones in passing, like the time the teachers turned out to be vampire rats. Our Pamela Butchart page lists every book we have.
The one that gets read most in our library is The Spy Who Loved School Dinners, where a new girl from France actually LIKES the food. It’s already on my children’s spy books list, so I’ve left it out of the five below.
So, what they all share is the way Izzy talks. It comes out in one breathless rush of “and then” and “that’s when”, with the important words in CAPITALS. Maisie faints whenever she’s scared and Jodi takes charge of EVERYTHING.
The shouting never lets up though, so if that sort of page wears your child out, these will too.
The best Pamela Butchart books, my five
The Broken Leg of Doom!
The Broken Leg of Doom!
Set in a hospital, and the one I’d start with.
Maisie has broken her leg doing Jodi’s extreme dancing. At the hospital there’s a strange boy in a hat with a feather in it. His name’s Seb, and he says there’s a curse on Ward 13 that has just slipped inside Maisie’s giant plaster cast. Maisie is terrified of the number 13, so nobody’s rushing to tell her. Before long the gang have decided the bandage displays around the hospital can only mean a MUMMY’S CURSE.
It’s for 7 year olds. Jodi throws her dinner tray on the floor, and she also cries in the waiting room because the dancing was her idea.
The Great Crisp Robbery
The Great Crisp Robbery
A school trip on a sleeper train, and it’s one of our free books.
Izzy’s class is going to London on the sleeper train, and they’ll actually go to BED on it. Their teacher Miss Jones isn’t coming, and the new teacher in charge can’t even get their names right. Jodi is meant to be a bridesmaid at her aunt’s wedding, until a pink floaty figure comes flying down the platform. Then Izzy spots a hooded figure watching them, and nobody believes her until there’s a scream in the night.
Also for 7 year olds. Gary Petrie turns up with bags of crisps stapled inside his coat. The spooky moments are always followed by something ridiculous, so it isn’t really scary.
There’s a Beast in the Basement!
There’s a Beast in the Basement!
Something is very wrong with Mr Graves. He keeps bursting into classrooms, saying “Just ignore me!” and emptying every cupboard onto the floor. Then he cries all the way through an assembly about the new vegan sausages. Annoying Gary Petrie knows about a secret door in the playground that leads to a basement nobody knew existed. He gets shut in down there, in the dark, and comes out with a story about scraping and scratching noises.
For 7 year olds again. Gary and Jodi both want to be in charge, and Jodi very nearly explodes.
Wigglesbottom Primary: The Sports Day Chicken
Wigglesbottom Primary: The Sports Day Chicken
The one for the little ones, also a free one.
Three short school stories. In the first, the class are warming up for Sports Day when they notice the school chicken is copying their stretches. By the big race it has escaped from its pen and is running towards the finishing line. In the second, the head teacher’s ant farm escapes, and Anne-Marie has named every ant, including one called Lady Gaga.
This one is for 5 year olds and each story is short enough to read in one go. When they want longer chapters, There’s a Yeti in the Playground! is Izzy’s gang on a snowy day with an enormous footprint.
Petunia Perry and the Curse of the Ugly Pigeon
Petunia Perry and the Curse of the Ugly Pigeon
This one’s for the older kids, 9 and up.
Peri has just started at a new secondary school called Fortress. She’s set up a band with her best friend Cammy, who plays homemade bongos made out of old tights. Then a girl called Cara joins on spoons, and Cammy thinks she’s brilliant. Peri is not quite so sure. Meanwhile her mum bids a hundred pounds for a painting of Peri as a unicorn, and now the whole school thinks the boy who painted it is her boyfriend.
There’s a fair bit of crush talk about a boy the girls call Smile Boy. If it goes down well, my books like Lottie Brooks list is more of the same.
The rest of the Izzy books
Attack of the Demon Dinner Ladies is the one the others keep pointing back to. It starts on Shepherd’s Pie Day, when nobody can smell the shepherd’s pie, and Izzy tells you on the first page that Maisie ends up carried off by seagulls.
The Phantom Lollipop Man has the gang convinced the grumpy old lollipop man has come back as a ghost. The children decide he has died and plan posters for his funeral, so just a heads up if your child has lost someone recently. A Monster Ate My Packed Lunch! is a school trip to a lake with a legend, and it has wailing in the woods after dark.
The Baby Brother From Outer Space! is a baby who spells MARS with his alphabet blocks. The Secret School Invasion is a hundred and two pupils arriving from St Balthazar’s, their sworn enemies.
And Icarus Was Ridiculous is Izzy telling the Greek myths her way, for 9 year olds. These are the proper myths, so people die in them, though it’s all played for laughs.
And Pugly, for 5 year olds
Pugly is a pug who would prefer you called him Tobias Roberto Mozzarella Pugly. There are three. Pugly Bakes a Cake is the first, and Pugly Solves a Crime and Pugly On Ice follow. Clem the cat thinks all his ideas are ridiculous and tells him so roughly every two minutes.
When they’ve read all sixteen
My books like Tom Gates list is where I’d go next for a 7 or 8 year old who wants more chatty school stories. For the younger ones, I’d look at books like Judy Moody.
Just so you know…
All sixteen are in Little Reads, a children’s library app with 3,000+ hand-picked books. It’s £7.99 a month after a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. Two of the five above are among the 100+ free books on a free account.
Little Reads doesn’t teach reading and there’s nothing to pass. If yours already reads and wants the next Izzy book the minute this one’s done, that’s what it’s for.