Daisy and the Trouble with Coconuts

Kes Gray's Daisy and the Trouble with Coconuts is a funny story for 5 year olds about a girl who has never been to a funfair and absolutely cannot wait.

What happens

Daisy tells you on the very first page that a coconut is the worst sort of nut there has ever been. They're too big. They're too hairy. And if you try to win one, they get you into trouble.

Which isn't her fault, obviously.

Then she goes back to the beginning. A funfair is coming to town. Nanny and Grampy have rung up and offered to take her on Saturday afternoon. Grampy has a plan, and it has two parts. Win a goldfish. Win a coconut.

Mum isn't invited. Mum thinks funfairs are a waste of money and that the rides spin you round until you're sick. Daisy reckons Nanny and Grampy probably took her once and decided never again.

Getting as far as Saturday takes a while, and that's where a lot of the fun is. Daisy invents a special funfair breakfast with one Weetabix propped against another like a slide and Honey Nut Loops rolled down it into the milk. She practises her screaming in the shed (nobody mentions the cat asleep in the wheelbarrow until it's much too late). She hunts for six extra centimetres, because Dylan from two doors down says you have to be 140 tall for the really good rides. High heels. Two pairs of shoes at once. Books sellotaped to the bottom of her feet. None of it works.

Reading it is like being talked at by a very excited five year old who has thought about all of this MUCH harder than you have. Nearly every other sentence starts with the trouble with something. The trouble with fidgeting. The trouble with sun cream. The trouble with cats, who really ought to wear glow in the dark pyjamas.

In the car her teeth get excited. Then her gums. Then her tongue, then her taste buds, then her dribble. By the time the funfair is actually in front of her you're fairly excited yourself.

If you've got a child who comes out of school with a running commentary and a very firm opinion on everything, Daisy is brilliant company. The chapters are short and the jokes come in ones and twos, so it reads aloud nicely in small goes.

What to read next

Jack Beechwhistle is in Daisy's class, drawing funfair pictures all over his maths book and lying on the floor pretending to be dead. Daisy says she'd sooner be friends with him than with a coconut, which isn't much of a compliment. He has a book of his own in the library, mind. In Jack Beechwhistle's own book he introduces himself as Junior Defender of the World and explains why his front door only looks red.