Dick King-Smith is best known for his book The Sheep-Pig, made famous by the movie version Babe. Most of ex-farmer King-Smith's books are about animals. Not surprisingly The Hodgeheg is about a hedgehog. A rather plucky little hedgehog called Max.
Max lives with his family in a nice suburban yard. But they have a rather large problem. Lots of their friends and family members get killed trying to cross the road. A problem set out in the fabulous first line.
"Your Auntie Betty has copped it," said Pa Hedgehod to Ma.
Young Max seeks to find a solution to this terrible problem. He wants to find a safe way for his family to cross the road to get to the park on the other side, a large park which serves as a hunting ground for the hedgehogs.
Living in Australia I've never even seen a hedgehog, we don't have any. They are an introduced species in New Zealand but I don't believe I've ever seen any there either. Anyway I don't know much about them, and so I was very surprised to find out that they hunt mice and frogs and snakes!
It's probably no surprise to know that Max does succeed, but only after a few setbacks. He has a near miss with a cyclist and after a whack to the head his speech becomes quite peculiar.
"I don't want to bed into get," said Max. "I feel quite wakeawide. In fact I feel like walking for a go."
Young children love this kind of silly word play. It's a very cute book for a young reader.
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Hello Louise. .Thank you for your lovely comments on my posts about France and Luging. It was so much fun.
ReplyDeleteI remember my youngest son loving Dick King Smith's books. My grandsons too. Think I have this book . Great for younger children. 😊
I liked it best when our main character got his words mixed up. That part reminded me of The BFG.
ReplyDeleteAnne- Dick King-Smith is great for the youngsters.
ReplyDeleteDeb- I hadn't thought of the BFG connection, but I certainly see what you mean.
I had my one and only hedgehog experience in Istanbul when one crept into my tent to get at my bag of chocolates and biscuits. Scared the bejezzus out of me in the middle of the night - he wasn't as quiet as he thought!! I managed to roll him out of the tent using one of my flip flop's as a paddle!
ReplyDeleteI wasn't expecting wildlife in the middle of a big city camping ground!