The Sisters 8 4 – Jackie’s Jokes

Lauren Baratz-Logsted's Jackie's Jokes is a Sisters 8 mystery for 6 year olds about eight sisters, one very long April Fools' Day and a grown-up problem called Tax Day.

What happens

The Huit girls are octuplets and they're seven. Their parents vanished on New Year's Eve, and ever since, the eight of them have been running the house on their own. They've kept it secret from almost everyone.

They keep up appearances with a suit of armour dressed in Daddy's smoking jacket and a dressmaker's dummy in Mommy's clothes. Who'd guess?

It's April now, and the day starts with pranks. Carl the talking fridge wants to order worms and slugs. The pancakes are made of rubber. Then Jackie turns up with her long hair cut into a short bob (and her cat's had a trim too).

The whole world seems to be in on it. Even their teacher and the headmaster play tricks on them, and one of the girls' own jokes ends with a classmate in tears.

The girls tell the story together as "we", and they bicker exactly like sisters do. Rebecca is grumpy about everything. Petal faints at the slightest thing. Georgia always looks ready to punch someone!

Then a phone message arrives for Daddy from his accountant. Tax Day is thirteen days away. None of them has ever heard of taxes.

Their friend Pete the mechanic, the one grown-up they really trust, explains what he can. Jackie takes charge. She cracks the password on Mommy's computer in a way only the Eights would think of. And while they hunt for the tax file, they find some very strange pictures that make the mystery of their parents even bigger.

It's worth a thought before you hand it over. The girls often say their parents "disappeared, or died", and there's a moment where they miss them very hard. For a child who worries about losing a parent that could land heavily.

It's mostly played for laughs, though. The magic house, the robot who never cleans properly and the eight very different girls keep things light.

This is well into the series, so the Eights have already had a few months on their own by the time April comes round. It still reads fine as a first taste, but the mystery makes more sense from the beginning.

What to read next

If your reader enjoys it, Annie's Adventures is the place to start. It opens on New Year's Eve, with eight girls waiting for their belated Christmas presents and slowly noticing that Mommy and Daddy haven't come back.