R. A. Spratt’s Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion is a very silly story for 8 year olds about a flying pig who works as a nanny for ten cents an hour.<\/p>\n
Nanny Piggins used to be blasted out of a cannon at the circus. She now looks after Derrick, Samantha and Michael, and their father would much rather she didn’t.<\/p>\n
Mr Green is the joke that keeps giving. He’s a tax lawyer who once spent four hours straightening and re-bending paperclips, then billed the time to a short-sighted widow. He speaks to his own children mainly to tell them to go away.<\/p>\n
In the first chapter he signs all three up as exchange students to Nicaragua for six months, purely so he can have the house to himself.<\/p>\n
So Nanny Piggins thwarts him. That’s the shape of the whole book. Something outrageous happens, and a pig in a hot-pink wrestling leotard sorts it out.<\/p>\n
The chapters work as separate adventures, which makes this a lovely one to read a bit at a time. One night it’s a Belgian exchange student who follows Mr Green around taking notes on his ear wax. Another night it’s a Neighbourhood Watch patrol, a gramophone horn used as a nose horn, and a citizen’s arrest performed by catapulting yourself off a tree branch. A runaway lion escapes into the neighbourhood too, and Boris has the feeling he’s seen that lion before.<\/p>\n
Boris is her brother. He’s a ten-foot dancing bear who hides under the dining table whenever anyone walks in (nobody ever notices him).<\/p>\n
Reading it is like being let in on a joke the grown-ups are missing. Nanny Piggins says something completely unreasonable in an entirely reasonable voice, and then a bracket turns up and makes it funnier.<\/p>\n
Your reader will probably love how much of this is the children quietly siding with a pig against their own dad. Nobody is frightened of Mr Green. They just think he’s ridiculous.<\/p>\n
Is any of it upsetting? Not really. The word bacon is treated as the worst insult in the world, and that’s about as dark as it gets.<\/p>\n
If this one goes down well, You’re a Bad Man, Mr Gum! is in the library too. It’s the same gleeful nonsense, with a horrible old man who hates children, animals and corn on the cob, and an angry fairy who lives in his bathtub.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
R. A. Spratt’s Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion is a very silly story for 8 year olds about a flying pig who works as a nanny for ten cents an hour. Nanny Piggins used to be blasted out of a cannon at the circus. She now looks after Derrick, Samantha and Michael, and their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11538,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9810,"lr_next_read_anchor":"You're a Bad Man, Mr Gum!","lr_seo_hook":"A flying pig nanny, a ten-foot bear and a father worth thwarting."},"book_tag":[18],"age_group":[26],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[808],"class_list":["post-8258","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-animal-books","age_group-books-for-8-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-r-a-spratt"],"yoast_title":"Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion by R. A. Spratt | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A flying pig nanny, a ten-foot bear and a father worth thwarting. For ages 8+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n