The Mr Men

C is currently very into the Mr Men and Little Miss series by Roger Hargreaves. We do not have the entire set, despite the fact that it is often available from The Book People for a knockdown price, for two reasons. Firstly the space - there are just so many of them, that even though they are small, they would still take up a disproportionate amount of shelf space. Secondly, although I LOVE some of them, I find the quality to be quite variable. I could read Little Miss Greedy every day - I think the picture of the pile of sixty-six sausages is one of my favourite images of all time, ever. I also love Mr Messy and the smartened up version of him with no mouth at the end. I could go on.

However, some of them are just not all that good. And for small children, they are extremely wordy. Some children, who like the sitting-on-knee-and-hearing-Mum's-voice aspect of stories will probably tolerate that perfectly well. However, A was always one for the action, and used to frantically try and turn the pages of the Mr Men books as I was still in the middle of the second paragraph of text. That used to annoy me, as I have OCD tendencies in many areas of life, and one of them is finishing books that I have started.

Anyhow, C is now at an age where he can read them himself, and something in them obviously appeals greatly to him. He always gets one from the school library, and has read all of our meagre selection several times. He chose for me to read Mr Mean tonight. Not one of my favourites, but we enjoyed it, in a slightly-too-many-words kind of a way. A can now tolerate sitting through the whole of a Mr Men book, but then she should be able to, since she is nearly 8 years old!