Reviews

The Collected Tales of Nurse Matilda by Christianna Brand

gargamela's review

2.0

Certain parts were clearly funny, especially does containing details of the children's shenanigans, but other parts were simply odd. For example, I would have liked to get more details on why Matilda was ugly and why she became beautiful when children stopped misbehaving and why this was her only character trait besides the fact that she had a magic stick and liked to punish children for being naughty. In addition, I found myself bored with the same pattern repeating itself - children are naughty, Matilda punishes them, children stop being naughty for a short while and then return to their old habits. However fun their shenanigans were, I became frustrated by the fact that they seemed to learn nothing and that they only stopped doing certain things because the punishment was too harsh. I clearly prefer Mary Poppins over Nurse Matilda any time of the day.

debnanceatreaderbuzz's review

4.0

A 1001 CBYMRBYGU.

Nurse Matilda is the recommendations of wise parents who see the antics and misbehaviors of the Brown children. And so she arrives and sets about putting the children in order. Nurse Matilda is a little bit Mary Poppins, a little bit Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. But horribly ugly. And not very nice. She knows, nevertheless, how to get children to do the right thing.

glyptodonsneeze's review

5.0

Nurse Matilda. It is not in any way called Nanny McPhee, but it is quite good. Basically, the Brown children are very naughty so Mrs. Brown hires Nurse Matilda to sort them out. When she arrives, they are being simply horrid, and Nurse Matilda thumps her stick and they all have to keep doing whatever naughtiness they're doing until it becomes simply awful and they're immune to doing it again. For example, they eat too much porridge and jam and buns and bad-for-you things at breakfast, and Nurse Matilda thumps her stick and the children keep eating and eating until their insides are filled with porridge and they all have stomachaches. There's an impossible number of children, big ones, little ones, and the Baby. Nanny McPhee does become prettier as the book progresses, but doesn't marry a widowed Colin Firth, which Missie says is a thing in the movie. I tried reading the next book in the series because the book Missie handed me was three Nurse Matilda books in one volume, but you can't read the same book twice in a row, deserving though it may be.

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