Kids into books - The Fat Man

This weeks title: The Fat Man

Author:Maurice Gee

Publisher: Penguin Books, $15.95

Illustrator: Chris Mousdale

Age Group: 8-13 years



Colin Potter was a hungry boy. His mother said he had a hole in his stomach and one day she'd get a needle and thread and sew it up. 'Ha, ha,' he said. She never let a joke go until she had hammered it to death. And her sayings, most of them to do with food, nearly drove him mad. They were like the holey tea-towels she hung on the line to dry and should have been thrown out years ago. 'Chew your food thirty-two times otherwise your stomach won't digest it,' she said. Or: 'You should wash each swallow down with Adam's ale.' Colin wanted cordial and fizz. He wanted cake and biscuits and fresh white bread and strawberry jam.

'Hard food for hard times,' she said, and gave him a crust with a smear of dripping on it. She sent him to the scullery for some Adam's ale. 'And use the same glass, don't take a new one,' she said. Fat chance, he thought. They only had four glasses four old peanut-butter jars and all of them were dirty already.

They were hard times. They were hungry times. Colin could remember when his father had a job and brought home two pounds ten a week and they had roasts for dinner, with gravy and baked kumara, and date roll for pudding, and a custard trifle for a treat.


Tomorrow: Mince Stew and mashed potato.