More About Paddington

Michael Bond's More About Paddington is a funny second helping for 7 year olds, with the bear from Darkest Peru now very much one of the Brown family.

What happens

It opens on a quiet summer afternoon in Windsor Gardens. Then Paddington turns up with a camera he's bought at the market for three pounds (rusty screws and old nails fall out of it). He wants to take a family photograph.

What could go wrong? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Mr Brown ends up with a piece of string tied round his ear, and Paddington gets his head stuck inside the camera. Mrs Bird goes to fetch the butter.

That's very much how things go here. Paddington has an idea, he's sure he can manage it, and it gets bigger and messier until somebody has to rescue him.

When the family go off to a wedding, he decides to decorate his new room himself. A bucket of whitewash, a rope and a hook in the ceiling are involved. So is the wallpaper, which he puts up so keenly that he papers over the door!

Later he reads a mystery story and spends his savings on a disguise kit with a long black beard. He's going to find out who took Mr Brown's prize marrow. It ends at midnight with three policemen staring at one small bear.

Your reader will probably love feeling a bit wiser than Paddington. You can see each disaster coming a mile off and that's half the fun. He's also so sure of himself, which makes it funnier. When Mrs Bird sees straight through his disguise and just asks him to fetch some butter, he's SO disappointed.

There's lots of warmth too. His friend Mr Gruber, who has an antique shop in the Portobello market, is always ready to help over a cup of cocoa. And the Browns are very forgiving.

It's an old-fashioned world, just as you'd expect. Mr Brown smokes a pipe and the foreman on the building site says "Cor!" The midnight police scene is played entirely for laughs.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Paddington Helps Out is in the library too. It starts with a family picnic on the river, where Mr Brown puts Paddington in charge of the ropes (never a good idea).