Dirty Bertie 20 – Dinosaur!

Dirty Bertie Dinosaur by Alan MacDonald is three daft stories for 6 year olds, starting with a very large tooth that Bertie's dog digs up in the park.

What happens

Whiffer finds it under the trees. Bertie has seen pictures in his Dangerous Book of Dinosaurs, so he knows exactly what it is. And if there's a tooth, maybe they aren't ALL extinct?

His friends Darren and Eugene aren't so sure, but they help him dig a trap anyway. Eugene is hoping for a Diplodocus (they're vegetarian). It would all be going beautifully if Angela Nicely from next door would stop following them about. Then Angela says she's SEEN the dinosaur, and offers to show them.

In the second story a classmate brings in an Easter egg bigger than a football for the school's Spring Fair. Guess the weight and you win it. Bertie's plan to find out the answer leaves him squashed under the staffroom coffee table for the whole lunch hour, with the egg and nothing to eat. Can you see where this is going?

The third has Bertie offered five pounds to feed Angela's cat Pusskins for the weekend. All he has to remember is the code for the burglar alarm. While he's there he finds Angela's private story book, which stars a princess called Angela and a certain Prince Bertie. He is NOT happy.

Angela is in two of the three stories and she's the best thing in them. Bertie would love to shake her off, and she's usually a step ahead of him.

This one's the twentieth Bertie book, but every story stands on its own in four short chapters. It doesn't matter where your reader joins in.

It's only fair to say what Bertie's like, though. He picks his nose, tells fibs and goes into places he's been told to keep out of, and he doesn't always get found out. That's the joke, and your reader will probably be in on it. But if you like the naughty one to have learned a lesson by the last page, he's not your boy.

What to read next

If your reader ends up on Angela's side (she'd expect nothing less), she has books of her own. In the first Angela Nicely book she's certain the head teacher has come to school in a wig, and she sets out to prove it.