Daisy and the Trouble with Giants

Daisy and the Trouble with Giants by Kes Gray is a very chatty chapter book for 5 year olds, and the trouble in question is entirely Daisy's fault.

What happens

Daisy tells you the ending first, sort of. Something happened today. Nanny got cross. Mum got cross. Grampy got cross. It happened all over Nanny and Grampy's garden and it had something to do with magic beans.

And you cannot blame her, because magic beans do not sparkle. They really ought to. But they do not.

Then she goes back to the beginning and takes an absolute age to get anywhere, which is the whole joy of it.

On Friday, Mrs Peters read the class Jack and the Beanstalk. She does all the voices, even the witch and the frog. Daisy's mum does the same voice for everybody, including the princes, which Daisy has noticed and is too polite to say much about.

Then Jack Beechwhistle shouted out a Fee Fi Fo Fum rhyme about Daniel Baines being a stinky bum, and Mrs Peters said that if he did not apologise there would be no more storytime on a Friday ever again. For anyone.

Daisy would like it on record that this is really unfair on the rest of them.

On the way home she and her best friend Gabby played giants. Gabby the Great and Daisy the Enormous. Pavement cracks were roads, ants were cars, gnats were helicopters.

Then Gabby trod on some chewed-up chewing gum on a hot day, which is how she became Gabby the Foot Scraper.

Your reader will know exactly what the problem with Gabby is, because Gabby is always a bit taller and a bit richer. A zillion big red buses high and two bits, that sort of thing.

The reading experience is a small girl thinking out loud with nothing edited out. One idea a line. Short paragraphs with white space round them. Capital letters where she is really quite worked up.

It is lovely read aloud, and easy on a reader who has only just moved up to chapter books, because you can stop anywhere and nothing is lost.

Be ready for the wandering though. She will start telling you about the trouble with giants and end up on wheelbarrows, Yorkshire puddings and whether her nanny would get in a tizz. If your reader wants a plot that gets on with it, this one will drive them mad.

The soft bit sneaks up on you. Grampy puts Daisy in his squeaky wheelbarrow and drives her to pretend London. The patio is London. Buckingham Palace is the swing seat by the red flowers.

What to read next

Attack of the Giant Slugs hands the whole thing over to a boy called Jack Beechwhistle. The name might ring a bell. This one reckons he is a Junior Defender of the World, has saved it roughly twenty-seven times, and keeps his headquarters in a shed by the rhubarb.