Jennifer's Diary & the Worst Child I Ever Had - Anne Fine [0]
The Worst Child I Ever Had
Anne Fine was born and educated in the Midlands, and now lives in County Durham. She has written numerous highly acclaimed and prize-winning books for children and adults. Her novel The Tulip Touch won the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year Award; Goggle-Eyes won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the Carnegie Medal, and was adapted jor television by the BBC; Flour Babies won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year Award; Bill’s New Frock won a Smarties Prize, and Madame Doubtfire has become a major feature film.
www.annefine.co.uk
Some other books by Anne Fine
Books for Younger Readers
Care of Henry
Countdown
Design-a-Pram
The Diary of a Killer Cat
The Haunting of Pip Parker
Jennifer’s Diary
Loudmouth Louis
Notso Hotso
Only a Show
Press Play
Roll Over Roly
The Same Old Story Every Year
Scaredy-Cat
Stranger Danger?
Books for Middle-range Readers
The Angel of Nitshil! Road
Anneli The Art Hater
Bill’s New Frock
The Chicken Gave It To Me
The Country Pancake
Crummy Mummy and Me
How To Write Really Badly
A Pack of Liars
A Sudden Glow 0f Gold
A Sudden Puff of Glittering Smoke
A Sudden Swirl of Icy Wind
ANNE FINE
The Worst Child I Ever Had
Illustrated by Clara Vulliamy
PUFFIN BOOKS
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Hamish Hamilton 1991
Published in Puffin Books 1993
22
Text copyright © Anne Fine, 1991
Illustrations copyright © Clara Vulliamy
All rights reserved
The moral right oj the author has been asserted
Except in the United States oj America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way oj trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any jorm oj binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record jor this book is available jrom the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-14-193778-6
For Mary Benson,
remembering the good times
1. Under a Leafy Tree
Three babysitters sat round the sandpit under a leafy tree.
Mrs Mackle had Mark. He was asleep in his pram, so he was no trouble.
Jeff had the twins, Josh and Jessie. They kept bashing one another with their little wooden spades, and trying to feed each other things they found in the sand – dead insects, bits of grass, old sweetie wrappers – but they weren’t much trouble.
Flora had Frances. Frances kept charging off out of sight in the bushes, and Flora had to keep running off to fetch her back. Frances was more trouble than all the other three put together.
“Worst child I ever had,” said Jeff, “was a sniffer. Sniffed all the time. Sniff! Sniff! Sniff! Little pause, then, Sniff! I tell you, this child nearly drove me mad.”
He darted forward to take a broken end of lolly stick away from Jessie.
“Worst child I ever had,” said Flora, “was a fusser. Such a fusser! Fussed if it wasn’t the right cup. Fussed if they weren’t the right gloves. Fussed if you made the sandwich wrong, or cut it the wrong way. That child was a real pain.”
She rushed off to fetch Frances out of the bushes.
Mrs Mackle put out a hand to rock Mark in his pram while she waited for Flora to come back. As soon as Flora was sitting