The Perfect Hamburger and Other Delicious Stories

Alexander McCall Smith's The Perfect Hamburger and Other Delicious Stories brings together three food stories for 5 year olds, starting with a boy who makes the best burger ever and then has to find the secret ingredient.

What happens

Joe loves hamburgers. Juicy ones, with one ring of onion on the top and one on the bottom. His small town has just one burger bar, run by kind old Mr Borthwick, and it's looking rather shabby these days.

Then a big, shiny Hamburger House opens in town. Half the town queues for the grand opening, and poor Mr Borthwick sits alone behind his counter. Joe keeps visiting, though, and soon Mr Borthwick lets him cook his own burgers in the kitchen.

One day Joe adds a pinch of this and a spoonful of that from three old spice jars. The burger is AMAZING. Joe works hard to remember exactly what he did. But one jar has no label at all, just a picture of a tree, and there's hardly any left.

So off they go on a hunt. They visit the great chef Cassaroli, who is very grand and very cross. They meet a famous gourmet who has eaten ants on toast. And all the while the bank wants Mr Borthwick's money back.

It reads like a gentle detective story. Joe works things out by thinking back, step by step, which is a lovely thing for young children to see. Grown-ups will smile at the pompous chef and the gourmet's slightly embarrassing secret.

The sentences are plain and friendly, so it's a good one to share or for a new reader to try. It's written in American English, so there's the odd parking lot and "color" along the way. Will your reader notice? Probably not, and it might spark a fun question if they do.

What they'll love most is Joe himself. He sticks by his friend when everyone else has gone somewhere shinier, and he just won't give up.

The Spaghetti Tangle and The Doughnut Ring follow in the same book, each a story of its own, so there's more to go on with once the burger is sorted.

What to read next

If they like a kind boy who wants to help, Freddie Mole, Lion Tamer is another Alexander McCall Smith story. Freddie's family are short of money, and he dreams up ways to help his dad.