'The Adventures of Nanny Piggins' and 'Friday Barnes: Girl Detective' by R A Spratt

I finished reading this book on 16 January. It was recommended to me by a young cousin who was reading the third Nanny Piggins book at a recent family gathering. I don't tend to read a lot of junior fiction these days, more YA, so it was a nice change to discover this author.

Nanny Piggins is a pig who gets a job as a Nanny. In one sense she is the total opposite of the Mary Poppins syndrome - she is pretty much the world's worst Nanny (for example, she and the children hide and pretend there is no one home when the truancy officer knocks on the door...)

In another respect, Nanny Piggins does have parallels to Mary Poppins in that both of them have limited respect for the father of the household and generally subvert the paternal authority to side with the children.

I found the book funny and entertaining and would like to read the others in the series. You might enjoy the first paragraph:

After reading Nanny Piggins I read the first in another series by the same author: 'Friday Barnes: Girl
Detective'. Friday is a kind of 'Matilda' character who has read a lot of books (including lots of detective stories) but has limited social skills. She applied to university to study medicine and was accepted until they found out she was only 11, so she has to go to high school. Friday is not super keen on the idea but with some reward money from solving a police case she pays for her tuition at a private school. Socialising is challenging for her, as is the fact that she has to solve some mysteries. I enjoyed this story also and will look out for others in the series. I finished this book on 18 January.