Bookish Stuff – Just William

Continuing the fun time I’ve been having with children’s books lately I’m moving onto an older set of stories.

Just William

What I didn’t appreciate until I read these books was how old they are. I found them harder to read than other children’s books and I couldn’t work out what it was all about until I realised that they were first written in the 1950’s.

Don’t let this put you off though, despite some of the words being hard to understand and more than a bit old the stories are really good. William is a character that together with his gang of friends seem to somehow to find trouble, even when they’re not looking for it.

A few stories of worthy of note are:

1. William’s birthday where he thinks he’s getting two puppies and manages to get a herd of sheep to storm the village and trash the clothing of the local ballet class.
2. William manages inadvertently destroy the prize peaches and asparagus of two fiercely rivaled gardeners.
3. Striking fear into a local thinking club who think the house next door is haunted, whereas it’s only William and his pals using the house for midnight feasts.
4. Tricking his arch enemy and his gang out of their Christmas party presents in front of their very eyes.

While reading some of these I have literally been having to fight back the laughing, in my minds eyes I can really see all this going on and young William often in a state of wonder of how situations have got to where they are. In all honesty he often tries his best to be cautious and is merely the victim of time an unforseen circumstances.

In my mind they’re definitely worth a read to your kids, but I doubt they’ll be laughing like you will be!

Simon 🙂