My Brothers Hot Cross Bottom

My Brother's Hot Cross Bottom by Jeremy Strong is a daft Easter story for 8 year olds about a family who decide to hatch thirty eggs in the kitchen.

What happens

Nicholas is the one telling you about it. He reckons he and his mum are the only sensible people in the house, and on this evidence he has a point.

It starts with Dad carrying in a big plastic box and refusing to say what it is. Mum threatens to run away and join a circus. Four-year-old Cheese guesses elephant.

It is an incubator. Thirty eggs, thirty chicks, chicks for the Easter Fair at Nicholas's school, money for the new library, and the spare ones sold off. Dad thinks this makes him a genius.

Then Granny turns up with her husband Lancelot, whose leather jacket has HELL'S DINOSAURS spelled out in studs across the back. Today the jacket is also moving, because there are two rabbits inside it.

The twins name them Saucepan and Nibblewibble. This is the same pair who named a hen Poop.

So the back garden now holds a goat, a tortoise, eight chickens with names, two rabbits and an incubator. Next door, Mr Tugg is already fed up, and he does not know the half of it yet.

The funny part is the talking. Everybody talks over everybody else and nobody listens properly. Dad announces something, Mum takes it apart one straight-faced question at a time, and the twins roll about on the floor shouting sock-bird-banana.

Nicholas gives you all of this deadpan, which is the best bit. Lancelot calls him Nickers. He does mind, thank you very much, and he explains exactly why.

The title tells you the register, so nobody should be surprised by the bottom jokes. There is a fair amount of rude silliness and it is all of the harmless sort.

One small thing. Dad keeps pretending he is going to eat the rabbits and suggests keeping them in the oven. It is clearly a joke and Mum tells him off both times. Still, if animals being teased like that lands badly with your reader, it comes up early on. If they are already laughing at Dad rather than with him, it will not bother them at all.

The family are already up and running when you arrive, but Nicholas introduces everyone and every animal as he goes, so you are never lost.

What to read next

My Brother's Famous Bottom comes earlier in this family's life. The twins are barely one, the bank account is empty, and Dad's money-making scheme involves getting his baby son's bottom into a nappy advert.