Dirty Bertie 1 – Worms!

Alan MacDonald's Dirty Bertie - Worms is three short stories for 6 year olds about a boy whose favourite colour is brown, because mud is brown and so are fingernails.

What happens

In the first one an invitation lands on the mat. Angela next door is having a pink party and Bertie is the only boy invited. Six girls, a bouncy castle and instructions to wear something pink.

Bertie tries losing his memory as a way of dodging the whole thing. His mum sees straight through that in about four seconds.

So he thinks again, and here's where he's rather brilliant. Worms are pink, aren't they? He can go as a worm. He finds a pink sleeping bag, puts it on over his head, and rolls in a flowerbed to get the mud right (the sleeping bag is his sister's, and she's meant to be taking it to school camp).

The second story is National Courtesy Day, with a prize for the child with the best manners. Bertie decides he'll be polite for one whole day. That lasts until a dead bluebottle called Buzz falls out of his hanky into the sugar bowl.

The third starts on a Saturday morning, which is bin day, which is the best day of the week if what you want to be when you grow up is a bin man. Bertie fills a bag with rubbish for Ed to collect. A tin of cat food, his dad's slippers, a cauliflower, and a pot of old flowers somebody had left by the front door.

His mum had spent hours on that arrangement. It was for the summer fair competition.

Bertie's logic is the whole joke and it's never quite wrong. Worms really are pink. Earthworms really do live in mud. Those flowers really did look dead. The grown-ups are always right and he is never actually lying, and the gap between those two things is where every story lives.

Expect nose-picking, licked spoons, burping and a pet earthworm in a goldfish bowl under the bed. If that sort of thing makes someone in your house shriek with delight, you're in the right place. If it makes you sigh, this won't be your week.

Three stories in one book is a good shape for a reader who's just started managing chapters on their own.

What to read next

If they want more of him, the Bertie book called Yuck has him inventing a way to make money, going on the rides at the funfair and teaching a toddler her first word.