Horrid Henry’s Stinkbomb by Francesca Simon is four short funny stories for 6 year olds about a boy who has never once done the sensible thing.<\/p>\n
The first one is a reading competition, which is a good joke to put in front of a child holding a book.<\/p>\n
Miss Battle-Axe gives the class two weeks to read as many books as they can, with a book report on every one. Henry isn’t listening. He’s busy drawing a crocodile eating her. Snap goes her head. Yank goes a leg. His crocodile ends up with a big fat smile on its face.<\/p>\n
Then the word prize floats past and he sits bolt upright.<\/p>\n
Everyone starts shouting guesses. Sweets. A skateboard. A hamster. It turns out to be a family ticket to a brand new theme park, and now Henry has to win, because his parents only ever take him to museums and drag him up hills.<\/p>\n
There’s one small snag. Reading, as far as Henry is concerned, is hard heavy work, and just turning the pages wears him out.<\/p>\n
So he’ll start tomorrow. Only Tuesday brings five new comics. Wednesday there’s a television special. Thursday his friend turns up with a computer game. By Friday he is worn out from his long hard week.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile his little brother Perfect Peter has read five books and would like everyone to know.<\/p>\n
You can see it coming and it is still very satisfying when the competition turns out to end the next day.<\/p>\n
What makes these work is that you sit inside Henry’s head the whole time. His reasoning sounds completely fair while you can see precisely what he’s up to.<\/p>\n
Now, Henry is horrid. That is the entire point. In this story alone he lies about how much he’s read, calls his brother a worm, and snatches a book straight out of his hands. It does not go well for the book. Nobody in the story pretends any of that is acceptable, but Henry is a lot more fun to be than Peter, and some children find that very freeing indeed. Not every parent does.<\/p>\n
One practical thing. This edition has been changed for American readers. Your reader will meet math instead of maths, candy instead of sweets, and a million bucks. At one point a character talks about a diaper while the book in his hands is called The Happy Nappy. If yours is still sounding words out, that’s a few extra hurdles for no reason.<\/p>\n
If you’ve got a reader who enjoys a child behaving badly and getting away with almost none of it, Dirty Bertie – Yuck! does the same job in British English. Bertie also has schemes, and his mum has already worked out exactly how last year’s funfair went.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Horrid Henry’s Stinkbomb by Francesca Simon is four short funny stories for 6 year olds about a boy who has never once done the sensible thing. The first one is a reading competition, which is a good joke to put in front of a child holding a book. Miss Battle-Axe gives the class two weeks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11008,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7224,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Dirty Bertie - Yuck!","lr_seo_hook":"Two weeks to read the most books, and Henry has not opened one."},"book_tag":[23],"age_group":[31],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[333],"class_list":["post-7686","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-funny-books","age_group-books-for-6-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-francesca-simon"],"yoast_title":"Horrid Henry’s Stinkbomb by Francesca Simon | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Two weeks to read the most books, and Henry has not opened one. For ages 6+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n