Daisy and the Trouble with Burglars

Kes Gray's Daisy and the Trouble with Burglars is a very funny detective story for 5 year olds about a girl who's sure she can catch the robbers before the police do.

What happens

It's the first day of the summer holidays. Grampy rings at 6.52 in the morning with BIG news. Burglars have broken into the fish-and-chip shop and two houses in Daisy's town, all in one night.

There was no money in the till, so they took bags of frozen cod and haddock instead. (Daisy reckons they'd worked up an appetite.)

So Daisy and her best friend Gabby start their own detective agency. There's just one problem. Mum won't let Daisy go any further than the end of the road.

Can you solve a crime without leaving your own street? Daisy thinks so. A bit of chewed gum, a half-sucked Polo and a glove on a wall all go into the evidence bag. Then Dylan from down the road turns up with a magnifying glass and some very confident theories about Russian machine guns.

Daisy can hardly get through a page without one of her "trouble with" thoughts. The trouble with icing sugar is mums don't like you borrowing it (especially the whole box). Daisy needs it for dusting for fingerprints.

The fun is that Daisy is completely serious and the grown-ups are completely fed up. A bucket of homemade SmartWater balanced on the kitchen door is meant for a burglar. It gets Mum instead.

Mum isn't perfect either, which kids will love. Her car tax ran out three weeks ago, and when two police officers turn up outside the chip shop she does a getaway of her own. A few of the jokes sail over a young reader's head and land on the grown-up reading aloud.

If you've got a reader who asks a LOT of questions, they'll cheer at the town meeting. Daisy asks the police sergeant whether the stolen fish might be dripping as it thaws, leaving a trail all the way back to the burglars' hideout.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Daisy and the Trouble with Sports Day puts Daisy and Gabby on the school field, desperate to win, with Jack Beechwhistle being a pain in the background.