Funny Frank

Funny Frank by Dick King-Smith is a farmyard comedy for 7 year olds about a chicken who would very much rather be a duck.

What happens

Jemima Tabb is eight, lives on a farm and loves baby chicks. When a hen goes broody she sets the coop down near the duck pond, on the grounds that sitting on eggs for three weeks must be terribly boring and at least there'll be something to listen to.

Twenty-one days later, Gertie's eight chicks hatch. Seven of them scuttle about pecking at everything, the way chicks do.

The eighth one walks to the end of the run nearest the water and stands there. Watching the ducks.

He does it the next day too, and the day after that, until Gertie tells her friend Mildred that she's worried, because one of her chicks is funny. Not funny ha ha. Funny peculiar.

The conversations between the hens are the joy of this book. Gertie is a fussing, squawking mother. Mildred is the friend who says what everyone is thinking. When Gertie calls her odd chick over, he takes his time, then says "What?" like someone interrupted in the middle of something important.

He also tells his mother that ducks are cleverer than hens, which does not go down well.

Then he asks a passing line of ducklings how they learned to swim. They think this is hilarious. Your feathers aren't waterproof, they tell him. Your feet aren't webbed. And when he wades in anyway and asks what to do next, they shout one word at him and paddle off laughing.

Just so you know what's coming. The word is "Drown", and he does get into real trouble in the water before Jemima comes pounding down to fish him out. It's over in a page and the tone stays light, but if your reader has ever had a fright in a swimming pool, that bit will land.

Because the good part is that Jemima doesn't tell him to give up. She works out what a chicken would need in order to swim, which turns out to be a very small wetsuit and some flippers.

It's short, it's silly and the animals talk to each other exactly like people who have known each other far too long.

What to read next

King-Smith did it again with a piglet. In The Sheep-Pig, Babe is won at a fair, brought home by Farmer Hogget, adopted by a sheepdog called Fly, and then asks her whether he could learn to herd sheep himself.