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The Red and White Spotted Handkerchief by Tony Mitton
Published by Scholastic Children’s Books, 2000
ISBN 0590543539

Reviewed by Kilmihil Children’s Book Club

This is a collection of three rhyming stories with poems interspersed throughout. In The Red and White Spotted Handkerchief, poor Jack sets off with a crust of bread wrapped up in a hanky to ‘seek adventure and, who knows, maybe gold?’ The second story The Strayaway Child is about a young girl who wanders off one day from home and has wonderful adventures, and the third story is about Worthless Will, who is very lazy, but is rewarded by a fairy for his kindness and has amazing adventures of his own.

All three stories resemble to a degree the traditional fairy tales, and our adventurers do live happily ever after.

The children really enjoyed this book of poetry. They found it very easy to read and gave it ten out of ten. Favourite poems included ‘Runaway Flock’, ‘Carpet’, ‘Troll’ and ‘Stream’.