Wild Thing

Emma Barnes's Wild Thing is a laugh-out-loud family story for 8 year olds about a big sister and the five-year-old who drives her up the wall.

What happens

Kate's got a problem, and her problem has a name. It's Wild Thing, her little sister (real name Josephine). Kate has already tried putting up a sign to sell her. Dad points out that nobody would take her.

You can see why. In the first chapter Wild Thing gets a tiny plastic guitar wedged up her nose, and screams so loudly that the neighbour calls the police. At the hospital she sits on a small boy until he hands over his toffees, and still comes home with an I WAS A BRAVE GIRL IN HOSPITAL badge. Kate is outraged!

Then Wild Thing starts school. She won't sit down, she plays air guitar through the nice songs, and she cuts a chunk out of her own hair in the craft corner. Kate just wanted to be quietly herself at school. Now EVERYONE knows about her sister.

Kate tells the whole thing herself, and her grumbles are brilliant. She's fed up, embarrassed and completely exasperated. She's also quite funny about it (Mr Brice, her old teacher, said imagination was a wonderful thing, but he never had to take his sister to hospital because an imaginary monkey stuck a guitar up her nose).

Underneath all the chaos there's a lot of warmth. Dad is a guitarist who left his band, Monkey Magic, and Kate starts to wonder whether he misses it. Their mum died when Wild Thing was tiny, and Gran helps look after them, mostly with cheese on toast. Kate is secretly desperate to be in the school musical and far too shy to say so.

It's worth knowing it's quite a cheeky book. There's a whole running joke about biting bottoms, Wild Thing moons her family, and she shouts a swear word in the playground (it's never written down). If that sort of thing would make your reader howl with laughter, they'll love it. If it would give them ideas, well, you've been warned!

Any child with a little brother or sister will probably recognise the feeling of being mortified and fond of them at the same time.

What to read next

If Kate and her sister go down a storm, there's more chaos in Wild Thing Gets a Dog. Dad's friend Wes goes off on tour to America and leaves them in charge of his dog, Hound Dog, which makes Wild Thing wilder than ever.