Daisy and the Trouble with Life

Kes Gray's Daisy and the Trouble with Life is a very funny story for 5 year olds about a girl who has been grounded and cannot see why.

What happens

Something happened yesterday. Daisy's mum will not say what. She will only say it was extreeeemely naughty, and that Daisy needs to do some long hard thinking about it.

You do not find out either. Not for ages.

So Daisy is stuck in the lounge with nothing to do and a very great many opinions.

Her main opinion is that grounded is the wrong word. If you are grounded, surely you should just have to stay on the ground. Inside ground, outside ground, it should make no difference. No hopping, no parachuting. She offered to stand on the grass in the back garden with her feet flat and everything. Her mum still said no.

That is how the whole book runs. Every chapter starts with the trouble with something, and each one drags in the next. The trouble with mums. The trouble with cats. The trouble with buckets. The trouble with goldfish who would rather be dolphins.

By the time she has explained why Freddy the goldfish went to live in Mrs Pike's pond, you will have heard about live ants, a saucepan, water gone as green as pea soup, and exactly why Daisy needed to get in the bath with him.

None of it is her fault, obviously. The soapy water that went everywhere was the suds' fault. The frowning is her mum's fault. And the front door's.

She also keeps interrupting herself to nip off somewhere. She never says where.

If you've got a child who argues like a barrister and loses anyway, this will go down a treat. The joke is that Daisy's reasoning is actually pretty good. She is just up against a mum who has heard it before.

The chapters are tiny and each one is basically one joke, which makes it a lovely one to read out loud, and a kind one for a reader who wants to stop after two pages feeling quite pleased with themselves.

And no, you still do not know what she did.

What to read next

If they enjoy a child at war with the rules of their own house, Horrid Henry's Underpants starts with Henry glaring at a plate of cauliflower cheese and arguing, with total conviction, that chips and ketchup count as vegetables.