My Brother’s Famous Bottom

My Brother's Famous Bottom by Jeremy Strong is a daft family story for 8 year olds, told by Nicholas, who is fairly certain he does all the work in this house.

What happens

The family has no money. Less than no money, as Dad explains at a special meeting, banging a spoon on the table to get everyone to listen.

Dad's first three money-making ideas are selling the twins, selling Nicholas and selling Granny. Mum is not impressed.

His actual Big Plan is a farm. In the back garden. They already live there, so that bit is sorted.

Soon there are ten chickens, a cockerel, rows of vegetables and a goat called Rubbish, because she eats anything. She eats Nicholas's shoelaces. Then she eats next door's wellies.

Nicholas learns to milk her, which he was NOT keen on to start with. There's also a tortoise doing security duty, because Dad couldn't get a rhinoceros.

The twins are James and Rebecca, except everybody calls them Cheese and Tomato, on account of where they were born. They vanish constantly. One of them turns up on the second shelf of the wardrobe. Both of them turn up in Granny's sidecar wearing tiny crash helmets.

Granny is sixty-five, married to a Hell's Angel called Lancelot, and does wheelies.

It's all told straight to you, the way a child would tell it. Nicholas thinks his dad is brilliant and then changes his mind two lines later. He complains about nappy duty roughly every other page.

The best running joke is Mr Tugg next door, who has a temper you can watch arrive. He goes red, then deep red, then purple, then white hot. Then he explodes, while Dad stands there asking innocent questions about his moustache.

Nobody in this family is embarrassed about anything. If your child is at the age where bottoms, cowpats and a cockerel falling down the chimney are the funniest things going, they'll get through it fast and read bits out to you.

The nappy advert the title promises comes later. What gets everyone there is the farm, the debt and the local telly station ringing up.

What to read next

If they want to know how this lot ended up with twins in the first place, My Mum's Going to Explode! is the earlier one. Nicholas is still an only child, Mum makes her announcement over lunch, and Dad takes the news so well that he drops his cutlery into the white wine sauce.