Dirty Bertie 8 – Mud!

Alan MacDonald's Dirty Bertie - Mud is three grubby, very funny stories for 6 year olds about a boy who can't stay clean for five minutes.

What happens

Bertie is brilliant at watching football. He's terrific at talking about it. Playing it is another story! So when his sneaky classmate Know-All Nick tricks Miss Boot into putting him in goal for the big match, Bertie is horrified. They're playing the team at the top of the league. Nick can't wait to watch.

His dad's back-garden coaching session ends with a crash and a tinkle of glass next door. His nightmares are about a whole team of Miss Boots. And the pitch on match day? It's a swamp.

Which is where Bertie comes into his own. Goalkeepers are ALLOWED to get muddy. So he tries a bit of mud-sliding, and that goes about as well as you'd expect. What happens when it all comes down to a penalty is one of the silliest moments in the book.

The second story is the opposite problem. It's class photo day and Mum has made a deal. Stay clean, keep hold of your hanky, and it's a trip to Splash City with its six flumes. Bertie's hair has been washed for the first time in months (his friends say he smells of flowers). You can probably see where this is going. There are bins, there's potato peel, and Nick is waiting to help things along.

The last one is a sleepover in a tent at the bottom of the garden with his mates Darren and Eugene. There's a midnight feast, a very bad ghost story about three ghost bears, and something scratching at the tent in the dark. It's just scary enough to be fun, and Whiffer the dog is involved.

Reading these is like being right there in Bertie's messy, noisy world. Every grown-up is cross with him, and every plan falls apart in the most disgusting way possible. Who wouldn't cheer for him?

There's no real peril here and nothing mean that doesn't get paid back (usually with a clod of mud). Each story is short, so they work well at bedtime.

What to read next

If they'd like to see Bertie from over the garden fence, his next-door neighbour Angela Nicely has her own books in the library. In Superstar she turns up to Miss Boot's football trial in sequinned trainers, determined to show the boys she can play.