The Wrong End of the Dog (Grubtown Tales) by Philip Ardagh
| The Wrong End of the Dog (Grubtown Tales) by Philip Ardagh | |
|
| |
| Category: Confident Readers | |
| |
Reviewer: John Lloyd
 | |
| Summary: A kockabout wacky adventure with dogs chasing pelicans chasing dogs, smelly trousers, and silly names. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 144 | Date: March 2010 |
| Publisher: Faber Children's Books | |
| ISBN: 978-0571247929 | |
|
Share on: | |
|
| |
If you haven't been to Grubtown before, then feel welcome. It's an auspicious day for the town of grubby and inept people with names like Rambo Sanskrit, and Mango Claptrap, as well. For today is the day of film star Tawdrey Hipbone's gala charity premiere. But there's to be no gala, and little charity either, when a pelican (and not the town mascot either, but a different one) comes and steals - yes, steals - the beloved dog Snooks - yes, Snooks - from where he was living the fine life in Tawdrey's hair - yes, hair.
Can Mango and our heroine Jilly Cheeter make use of some helpful stinky trousers, avoid the most blatant and deliberate bicycle crash in Grubtown history, and find Snooks? And how does the village brainbox, wandering around puzzling over some secretive directions, come in?
This is the fourth (self-contained) book in a series of bright, brisk and charmingly wacky reads targeted at something like the six to ten year olds. As Grubtown resident, Beardy Ardagh (his name for himself, not mine) is a very pleasant host - filling every page with some quirk of narration, should his descriptive powers and the other characters prove not hilarious enough for a moment. His chatty style is ideally suited to his surrealism - I can see his schools tours would be a riot if he brings news from Grubtown with him.
When not breaking off with asides about the pop music tastes of his fellow citizens, he might be dropping the very young in at the deep end with a lot of nonsense and asexual names, so the list of who's who at the end might be rather well-used. I could be slammed as an old curmudgeon when I say the lurches from one detective trail to another, to false ending, to quick change and recap, might be a little slapdash, but this is on the whole a fine example of the surreal silliness side of fiction. If you suspect a child near you to be up for that, I could not hesitate on this evidence to recommend this series.
I must thank the kind people at Faber and Faber for my review copy.
For more canine surreality, I might point you towards What's For Dinner, Mr Gum? by Andy Stanton.
Please share on: 
Facebook, 
Twitter and
Instagram
You can read more book reviews or buy The Wrong End of the Dog (Grubtown Tales) by Philip Ardagh at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Wrong End of the Dog (Grubtown Tales) by Philip Ardagh at Amazon.com.
Comments
Like to comment on this review?
Just send us an email and we'll put the best up on the site.
