Bookseller blurb: Laura is amazed when her baby brother George starts talking to her when he's only four weeks old, particularly as he sounds like a grown-up! It's a big secret to keep from their parents and the rest of the family and leads to all sorts of comic confusion until George's first birthday - when he makes a speech to his startled family.
This little junior novel is just plain fun. It would be terrific family or class read aloud. The baby is not supposed to be able to talk let alone do times tables and even read! And his birthday speech is magnificent.
The copy I found in a library was published in 1988 so I held my breath thinking this book would surely be out of print - but NO. Here is the ISBN for the 2021 reprint [9780141316406]. My copy has illustrations by Judy Brown - here is the old cover. I am not sure who has illustrated this newer copy.
And here are some other covers - you could use these in a library session as a discussion starter about covers and book designers and fonts and reader appeal.
This version is illustrated by Chris Riddell
Dick King-Smith served in the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War and afterwards spent twenty years as a farmer in Gloucestershire, the county of his birth. Many of his stories are inspired by his farming experiences. Later he taught at a village primary school. His first book, The Fox Busters, was published in 1978. He wrote a great number of children’s books, including The Sheep-Pig (winner of the Guardian Award and filmed as Babe), Harry’s Mad, Noah’s Brother, The Queen’s Nose, Martin’s Mice, Ace, The Cuckoo Child and Harriet’s Hare (winner of the Children’s Book Award in 1995). At the British Book Awards in 1991 he was voted Children’s Author of the Year. In 2009 he was made an OBE for services to children’s literature. Dick King-Smith died in 2011 at the age of eighty-eight.
You might also have a really old book in your library called Crumbs by Emily Rodda which is also about a baby who can talk.
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