Molly Gumnut Rescues a Bandicoot by Patricia Puddle
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a story about cheeky 8 year old, Molly Gumnut as she sets out with her father's camera to take a wildlife photo for the school calendar. In her attempts to find something interesting to photograph, she comes across the neighbour's cat, Tiddles, playing with a ball, which actually turns out to be baby bandicoot, a protected native marsupial. So begins the rescue of the injured animal and the adventures and mischief Molly Gumnut gets up to on the way.

I am a mum and a primary school teacher, so I read quite a few children's books and I'm afraid this isn't among my favourites.

First of all, I felt that the overall structure of the story was weak. It would have been better if there were fewer events so there could be more build up to them, creating excitement and anticipation of the smaller events throughout the story. The calendar photograph was the underlying story thread which nicely linked the beginning with the end and coincided well with her finding and releasing the Bandicoot. I felt the other events dragged the story out too much and detracted too much from the plot. Children's books need to model good structure of stories as well as interesting language. This story was too repetitive and the plot was too 'untidy' with lots of extra events which could have been left out to create a clearer and more easily readable story.

I found it hard to warm to Molly. She was annoying in the way she acted quite selfishly and in the way she spoke to others. This behaviour seemed to contradict the fact that coming from a nice family, better behaviour would have been modelled and expected. It infuriated me at times that the adults around her, who were caring and seemed to have good values, were not consistent in managing Molly's increasingly challenging behaviour. She simply seemed to get away with being 'impudent' and doing as she pleased, although at other times they suddenly became strict and imposed sanctions. There were times that I thought Molly was an intelligent girl, especially when talking about how to care for animals, but her actions didn't generally reflect that. Children do act erratically at times and frequently do things without thinking of the consequences, but Molly repeatedly got into that kind of trouble, which didn't seem realistic.

Similarly, I found the other characters in the story inconsistent or unbelieveable. Grandma was sometimes strict and got cross and at other times she was easy going and gentle natured; dad sometimes laughed off Molly's antics and at other times got angry at her; mum often let her get her own way, yet also put her foot down and imposed strict consequences. The sisters could have been introduced at the beginning, but we are suddenly introduced to them when they have a role to play. Again, if the author had focussed on fewer acts of Molly's mischief, she could have made more of Gretchen, developing her character more and therefore making her more believeable and adding another layer to the story.

During the story, I was left with questions about things that just didn't make sense. Why did people keep trusting Molly to be left alone when she clearly couldn't be trusted? Why didn't anyone call Gran to tell her that Molly had been found? Why would Mrs Wilson blame herself for Molly going missing, especially after Molly was so rude to her.

I like the idea of using photographs to illustrate a story, but I think it has to be done very carefully and I'm not sure that's the case here. I'm afraid I didn't really like the pictures in this book; somehow they didn't quite fit the story. They either looked like the story had been conveniently changed to fit the picture or the photo was staged to fit the story.

I'm sorry to play the teacher here, but there were a large number of errors in this book, which I think could have been avoided. There were many spelling mistakes, even in Molly's name on one occasion, and some words missing here and there. It was quite repetitive, using the same language over and over again (eyes popped wide; tears clouded her eyes) and sometimes repeating the same phrase almost as though the author had forgotten she had already included that particular thought or idea.

Overall, I think the idea for the story is a good one, but it needs to be developed more carefully. I think it would make a lovely short story and could imagine children enjoying watching it as a series on TV.

As it is, I'm afraid I would not read it to a class of children or give it to my own children to read.


View all my reviews