Nanny McPhee: The Collected Tales of Nurse Matilda
By Matt Berman,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Tiresome tales of misbehaving kids.
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What you will—and won't—find in this book.
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What's the Story?
Printed to accompany the movie, Nanny McPhee, this edition is a compilation of the "Nurse Matilda" stories, upon which the movie was (very loosely) based. In one volume it contains the books Nurse Matilda, Nurse Matilda Goes to Town, and Nurse Matilda Goes to Hospital.
Is It Any Good?
There's a reason this had gone out of print, until being resurrected by the related movie -- it wasn't very good. The Nurse Matilda stories are so unbelievably formulaic that even kids who get a giggle out of creative misbehavior may get as sick of it when it is endlessly repeated. The author deliberately makes the characters interchangeable so the reader never knows, or cares, who is who among the kids. Even Nurse Matilda has no personality -- she just grows prettier or uglier depending on the kids' behavior.
Just as the kids in this story respect no one, it seems the author doesn't either. There are only three types of characters: nasty children, oafish adults, and Nurse Matilda, the punisher, from whom the children learn nothing. Add wicked, selfish behavior played for laughs in with the xenophobia and mild racism characteristic of British children's books of the period and you get a book that may make your kids laugh -- but you'll wish it didn't.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about why this collection was printed now. It had gone out of print -- why would a publisher put it back on shelves? How will the related Nanny McPhee movie encourage sales of this book? Families who have seen the movie may want to compare and contrast the two.
Book Details
- Author: Christianna Brand
- Illustrator: Edward Ardizzone
- Genre: Fantasy
- Book type: Fiction
- Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
- Publication date: March 12, 2006
- Number of pages: 382
- Last updated: July 13, 2015
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