The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes

The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes by Gary Rubinstein & Mark Pett is a picture book for 5 year olds about the day a perfect record finally breaks.

What happens

Beatrice Bottomwell does not make mistakes. Not one, as far as anybody in town can remember.

Her socks match. Her shoes go on the proper feet. She gives Humbert the hamster his favourite food, which is broccoli. When she makes her little brother Carl's sandwich she uses exactly the same amount of peanut butter as jam.

She has fans. They wait outside the house in the morning to ask whether she made her bed, and whether she forgot her maths homework. She had. She hadn't.

Most people do not even know her name. They just call her the Girl Who Never Makes Mistakes.

Carl is the opposite and he is having a marvellous time. He eats his crayons, draws with his green beans, dances with his hands and plays the piano with his feet.

Then Beatrice nearly drops four eggs at school, catches them, and cannot stop thinking about it for the rest of the day.

That near miss is the bit to watch. It is what starts the worry. She turns down a go on the ice with her friends. She barely touches her supper. Her dad, meaning every word kindly, tells her she doesn't make mistakes, and she tries to smile back at him.

Any child who has ever been praised for being good at something will know that trap from the inside.

The talent show that evening involves juggling a hamster, a salt shaker and a water balloon, which is exactly as sensible as it sounds. Something goes wrong with the salt shaker.

What follows is the whole point of the book, so I won't set it all out here. It involves a very wet hamster and a giggle that spreads.

It reads aloud beautifully. The sentences are short and the flattest lines are the funniest, like the straight-faced list of everything Carl gets wrong.

This one often gets handed over as a lesson, which is a shame, because it works far better as a joke that happens to be true. Beatrice is funny before she is a moral.

If yours is the child who cries over a crossing-out, read it together rather than leaving it on the shelf. The comfort is in the laughing, and they may want company for that.

What to read next

Should the perfectionist in your house want company, try The Talented Clementine. Clementine's school announces a talent show, she is quite certain she has no talent whatsoever, and she asks to be sent to the head's office before she has even done anything wrong.