Daisy and the Trouble with Chocolate

Kes Gray's Daisy and the Trouble with Chocolate is a very funny Easter story for 5 year olds, told by a girl who is absolutely not always in trouble.

What happens

Daisy has been made Hamster Guardian of the Easter Holiday. That means Pickle and Pops are coming home with her for two whole weeks. Cage, wheel, sawdust, everything.

All she needs is her mum's signature on the letter from Mrs Peters.

(She has a go at that bit herself first. In purple felt-tip. Signed "Mum".)

Then the neighbour knocks. Mrs Pike's brother works at Chocolate Land and he can get hold of tickets. Two of them, for the Spirit of Easter Festival, for nothing at all.

There is one condition. Daisy has to be good every day right up to Good Friday. Seven whole days in a row.

So now she has hamsters beside her bed and chocolate coming, and Mum has already told her that chocolate is one of the worst things you can ever give an animal. You can feel where this is going quite a while before Daisy does.

Reading it is like being talked at by a child who has to tell you everything, in order, with all the reasons. Almost every other thought starts with "The trouble with". The trouble with stationery cupboards. The trouble with breakfast (it ruins your appetite). The trouble with cuddling hamsters too tight is their eyeballs will pop out.

She counts their poos, too. Her record is 707 in one week. Barry Morely did the sums and worked out that is over fifty a day EACH, which Daisy finds genuinely amazing.

The whole book is like that. Jack Beechwhistle pings rubber bands at her and tells her hamsters caused the Great Plague of London. Her best friend Gabby TALKS IN CAPITALS. The two of them spend the holiday collecting furry findings for a hamster project.

If you've got a child who comes home and explains their entire day to you, with reasons, they will know Daisy immediately.

Nothing frightening happens in the opening stretch. The worst of it is a fibbed excuse about a bird with a massive beak and the very slow business of waiting for Friday to arrive. The one thing worth a thought is the setup itself. If your reader gets anxious about animals coming to harm, a story that puts two hamsters and a mountain of chocolate in the same house may keep them on edge, even while they are laughing.

The chapters are short, so it suits a reader just getting going on their own.

What to read next

If it's Daisy's rubber-band-pinging classmate who gets the biggest laugh, try Jack Beechwhistle's own book next. He narrates that one himself, and he is quite certain he has saved the world about twenty-seven times.