Summary: A bizarre family like most of us may have and the inside scenarios of what goes on inside this family. Of course we have our brother sister pranks from putting things in your sisters hair, ruining their dish of snacks with some added pepper. Parents getting onto you and saying the most annoying things is in this family as every other family.

Personal Reaction: It is funny to read how this made up story is so much like my own family. The pranks yes i have done to my sister and growing up of course my parents were annoying.

Classroom Extension: Students have a show and tell of things about their family. Tell the rest of the class about your pets, things you have done for pranks to your sister and realize how we all somewhat the same.

The longest poem in the book, Chocolate Cake, is about a little boy who can't get out of his mind the delicious chocolate cake he had for tea. He creeps out of bed at night (carefully over the creaky floorboard by his parents' bedroom), goes down to the fridge and 'tidies' the cake, side by side, evens it out, picks up the crumbs and little by little the whole cake is eventually eaten. This is all described in the most excruciating detail. Excruciating because you are with the little boy and you don't want him to get caught (you did this too, didn't you?) He is caught, but not till the next day and oh, it's so humiliating.

This, along with Bananas in My Ears (a really, really stupid story about having bananas in your ears so you can't hear anything) which has no point at all, but all children find so hilarious they really do end up with tears in their eyes from too much laughing, forms the absolute high point of well-written English humour for children. With writing like this, we all become children. As we grow up we forget what it is to be a child, to think like a child, but Michael Rosen hasn't, and his poems and silly stories bring us back to that.

Highly recommended for everyone above ground and especially if they have an under-ten year old within laughing distance. ( )