What a Mess and a Trip to the Vet - Frank Muir

What a Mess is an old children's television show written and narrated by Frank Muir. After the success of the show several books were released. This book is What a Mess and a Trip to the Vet.

The book is a small hardback one. It has a white cover with a picture of What a Mess jumping out of a window and the title above this in red green and yellow bubble writing. The back cover is also white with a picture of Frank Muir and a short paragraph about him and the book.

What a Mess is a scruffy Afghan hound who now lives in England. He was having a ice morning and enjoying himself having a snooze in his basket and dreaming his favourite dream. Half way through his dream he was disturbed by loud voices. He overheard the lady of the house in the next room saying that when she checked a moment ago he was fast asleep, she was sure there was something wrong with him so he must go to the vets.

All of a sudden What a Mess heard the word 'vet' and found himself wide awake. He ran through the back door as quick as he could and ran down to the bottom of the garden. He only stopped when he though that he would be safe. What a Mess found the cat was also at the bottom of the garden and the cat asked him what was wrong. What a Mess told the cat that the adults thought he slept too much and that he had to go the vets. The cat said that when he is told he needs to go to the vet he scratches and scratches his master and runs off up to the top of a tree. The cat told What a Mess that this is what he should do. What a Mess tried to climb the tree but could not and he found he was stuck on a branch and only a few feet above the ground. What a Mess fell from the branch and landed on his head. He had a bad headache and a big bruise so decide to take himself back to his basket.

Would What a Mess be able to get out of his trip to the vet or would his owners manage to get him there?

My boys love this book as it is very funny. The story is great and it has been written in nice simple words which means that my 6 year old is able to read it independently. The book takes about 10 minutes to read but longer if you stop to look at the illustrations. The illustrations are on every page and they are full of great fun details. In each picture there is always a lot going on in the background and funny little things happening. We usually spend a good 5 minutes looking and talking about each picture so it takes us a very long time to get through the whole book!

This book may not be suitable for younger children as they will loss interest as the pictures may not be big enough for them and the story is just a bit long for their attention span.

This book was published by Ladybird and has a retail price on the back cover of £1.20. This price has no relevance today and this book can be found on EBay and at the moment there are also a couple of titles available on Amazon market place with a starting price of 1p. I managed to get this one from EBay for a couple of pounds.

I highly recommend this book as it has a fun story and wonderful detailed pictures.

I am reviewing the hard back edition of this book and not the audio as Ciao have listed it.