My Mum’s Going to Explode!

My Mum's Going to Explode! by Jeremy Strong is a very silly family story for 8 year olds about a boy who does not want a new baby, thank you.

What happens

The news arrives at the lunch table. Nicholas is ten, and he's been the only child in the house his entire life. Now it's going to be Mum, Dad, him and IT.

Dad takes it well. He drops his knife into the sauce, splatters his wife, breaks the plate, tips the rest into his own lap and asks how this happened.

Granny is a bit deaf and hears that Mum has rabies. She offers her some handcream, which she admits will only help with the spots.

Everyone else is delighted. Nicholas is not, and neither is Dad, who announces he thinks he's wet himself.

Then Mum has an idea from one of her baby books. Nicholas and Dad are to practise on a doll.

You want to see this doll. Imelda is bald apart from a few straggly bits, she has one leg, no clothes and one eye permanently half shut because strawberry jam got behind it. They have to feed her, bath her and change her nappies. Dad decides the only way through this is nappy-changing races.

Imelda sleeps in a cot in Nicholas's room with that eye half open. He's fairly sure she knows he hates her.

The rest of the household is Granny and her husband Lancelot, who is a sixty five year old Hell's Angel, a brilliant cook in a studded apron, and a man who talks to his motorbike as though it's a poorly pet. They've moved in because their own house fell into a hole in the garden.

Granny is the real star. She isn't nearly as deaf as she makes out and she winds Dad up something rotten, at one point sniffing pitifully about having to build herself a twig shelter in the back garden.

It's told in Nicholas's own words in short dated chunks, so it's an easy one to pick up and put down.

One thing worth flagging is that Nicholas really doesn't want this baby, and the book lets him feel that. Lancelot says so straight out in the garage, over a spark plug, and doesn't make a fuss about it. If you've got a child with a new brother or sister on the way, that conversation is a useful one to have sitting on the page.

What to read next

The same family turn up again in My Brother's Famous Bottom, which opens with Dad calling a family meeting about their money troubles. His first three ideas all involve selling a member of the household, starting with Nicholas.