Read Dirty Bertie 13 – Kiss! free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Alan MacDonald's Dirty Bertie book Kiss is a trio of daft stories for 6 year olds, and the first has Bertie running for his life from a girl who wants to kiss him.
It starts with a slug. Bertie's plan is to wave it at Angela Nicely, who lives next door and tells everyone he's her boyfriend.
Bad timing! Angela is playing Truth, Dare, Kiss or Promise with her friends Laura and Maisie, and she's just picked Kiss.
Rules are rules. So Angela chases him all day. Bertie hides behind a flower tub and in the boys' toilets.
He tries to sneak out of school in a pink anorak. His mates Darren and Eugene are no help at all (they tell Angela he wants to marry her).
Is there anything worse, when you're Bertie, than a girl who thinks you're lovely? If your reader would rather eat a slug than be kissed, they'll be right behind him.
The second story stars Snuffles, the very old class hamster. Miss Boot only trusts sensible children to take him home for the holidays, so Bertie isn't on the list. Then Eugene can't take him, and Bertie is the only one left in the room.
He promises to guard Snuffles with his life. Then one evening he cleans out the cage, turns round, and there's no hamster. And the bedroom door is open.
There's a wobbly moment where Bertie looks at Whiffer the dog and wonders. If you've got a soft-hearted reader who frets about pets, you can tell them it isn't that sort of book. Bertie's answer is to make a new Snuffles out of fur and hope Miss Boot doesn't look too closely.
In the third, Mum gets so fed up with another mum boasting about her gifted daughter that she blurts out a fib. Bertie plays the trumpet. Grade 5!
He doesn't even own one. Next thing he's in the Pudsley Junior Orchestra, bribed with pizza and under strict orders to pretend.
It's the thirteenth Bertie book but nothing carries over, so pick it up whenever you like. Every story is four short chapters with lots of capitals to bellow, which makes it a fun one to read aloud. Expect slugs, burps, hamster poo and a trumpet with a "dribble key".
Want more of Angela? She gets to be the star in Angela Nicely's own book. Laura and Maisie are in it too, and it opens with Angela certain that the head teacher has come to assembly in a wig.
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