Paddington Takes the Air

Michael Bond's Paddington Takes the Air is a warm, funny read for 7 year olds, and it starts with a bit of tooth going down the kitchen waste disposal.

What happens

Paddington is very upset. It was his best tooth, he says, and he cleaned it twice a day. Now there's nothing to put under his pillow!

So it's off to Mr Leach the dentist. Bears have forty-two teeth, which means extra charges. Paddington can't see why Mr Leach is still practising after all these years (he'd sooner pay extra for someone who knows what he's doing).

Then Mr Leach tells him to bite down hard and not let go, whatever happens. Paddington is a very obedient bear. Poor Mr Leach's thumb!

In the next story Mr Gruber gives him an old sewing machine. Paddington turns out to be surprisingly good at tablecloths and tea towels. Then Mr Curry arrives with a pair of trousers to be taken in, and he wants it done cheaply.

Paddington offers to do the job himself for fifty pence. So Mr Curry fetches a whole pile of trousers, including the ones from his best suit. Can you guess which pair Paddington practises on first?

After that it's the end-of-term gymkhana at Judy's school. Paddington has been training on a pouf in the Browns' sitting room. His first round earns him four hundred and fifty-two faults, most of them for trampling the judge's best bowler hat.

The jokes are mostly about words. Paddington hears everything in his own way and takes it all VERY seriously. You can almost see the grown-ups trying to keep a straight face.

Mr Gruber is lovely here too. He's always on Paddington's side, with cocoa in the deck chairs outside his shop and something kind to say when things go wrong.

This is book nine in the series, and the opening stories each stand on their own. That makes it great for bedtime, a chapter at a time. If your reader has a trip to the dentist coming up, they might enjoy Paddington's view of a chair that rises into the air at the press of a button.

What to read next

If they're after more of Mr Curry wanting a job done on the cheap, you'll find Paddington at Large in the library too. There he offers five pence for a few apples to be picked, and before long his lawn mower is hanging from a tree.