Just William 02 – More William

A boy with the very best intentions floods the entire hall in More William, Richmal Crompton's very old comedy for 8 year olds.

What happens

It's Christmas morning. William wakes up to find a new card hung on his bedroom wall, painted all round with roses and forget-me-nots. It reads "A Busy Day is a Happy Day". He works out which aunt is responsible and decides on the spot that he distrusts the sentiment.

His own presents for the family are already sorted. Sweets for a father who never touches sweets. A pirate story for his nineteen year old brother, who says he despises pirate stories. Coloured chalks for his grown up sister. He has chosen every single one so that he can quietly steal them back over the following week.

Then he goes down at five in the morning, singing at the top of his voice, and finds his four year old cousin Jimmy on the bottom step with an empty tin. Jimmy had collected snails to hand out as presents. The snails have left.

Every hat, coat, umbrella and inch of wallpaper in that hall now has a shining trail across it.

William remembers the card. Two buckets. Two scrubbing brushes. The trails do come off. Everything else gets drenched, and then Jimmy discovers that a scrubbing brush makes an excellent weapon.

The funniest part is William's defence afterwards, delivered soaking wet to his mother. You said to help. You can't clean up with water and not get wet, not if you do it properly. And, wounded, that he has been working since early this morning and it hasn't made him one bit happy.

Now the honest bit, because this one needs it. The book is a century old and it reads like it. Sentences run long. Words like deprecatingly and morosely turn up in ordinary description. His father comes downstairs and hopes that on this "relation-infested day" his feelings may be harrowed as little as possible.

William's own speech is spelled the way he says it, so your reader gets wot and prop'ly and jus' and brekfust.

It's a harder read than its shelf position suggests. Plenty of children will get far more from it if you read it to them, and it is genuinely lovely out loud. Three aunts in the house, maids not down yet, a father who would rather Christmas hadn't happened. All of that lands better in somebody's voice.

What to read next

If the language is a slog but the joke works, try The Worst Witch. Mildred Hubble doesn't mean to break rules or annoy the teachers either, things just happen when she's around, and the reading is a great deal easier.