Paddington Marches On

Michael Bond's Paddington Marches On is a very funny book for 7 year olds about a bear who means well and leaves a trail of chaos wherever he goes.

What happens

The Browns, Mrs Bird and grumpy Mr Curry next door are all here. Each of the opening chapters is a little story in its own right, so it's easy to read one at a time.

It starts in deep snow. Mr Curry has a heavy cold and frozen pipes, and he sends Paddington off to fetch the odd-job man (Mr Curry isn't famous for paying up). What comes back is a borrowed blowlamp and a book on plumbing. Who else would decide to fix the pipes himself?

You can probably guess how that goes. Saucepans, a hosepipe, a Wellington boot under a leak and a VERY wet bathroom! The joke is that Paddington is always so sure he's being helpful.

Then there's an invitation to a marmalade factory. Paddington loses his card down a drain and gets taken for a bear looking for work. Before long he's scrubbing out orange barrels for a few pence each. He's having a lovely time, right up until he decides to start at the bottom of the pile.

Back home, Mrs Brown and Mrs Bird go shopping and leave him minding the house in the middle of the spring clean. There's a brand new chimney-sweeping kit in a box by the fireplace. You can see where this is heading (Mrs Brown certainly had her doubts).

A lot of the fun is in the words. Paddington takes everything literally, so spring cleaning becomes cleaning the springs. Mr Curry mishears him right back, and their shouting match over the garden fence is one of the best bits.

The sentences are long and a bit old-fashioned in places, with blowlamps and stopcocks along the way. That makes it a lovely one to share out loud, and a confident reader will get plenty out of it alone.

If your reader loves a character who gets into trouble by trying very hard to be good, Paddington is perfect. He's polite, he's hopeful and it's never quite his fault.

What to read next

If they haven't met him yet, A Bear Called Paddington is in the library too. It goes right back to the start, when the Browns first spot a small bear with a suitcase and a label round his neck on a station platform.