Lazy Jack

A retelling of a favourite nursery tale with a very satisfying ending. There's no one as lazy as Lazy Jack. He gets out of bed in the afternoon, yawns, stretches, eats, drinks, burps and goes back to bed. "This won't do!" says his mum. She sends him to work for the builder. Jack does a day's work and takes his pound home, balancing it on his nose.

Not surprisingly it falls off. "You are a silly boy," says his mum. "You should have put it safely in your pocket." Next day he works for a farmer and is given a big jug of milk, which he pours into his pockets!Every day Jack works for a different employer and is paid in kind and always he follows his mother's advice - only a day late!

So when he works for a dairyman, he brings back a cheese - on his head!

He tries to wrap a puppy (from the baker) in a wet cloth; he drags a fish (from the fishmonger) home on a string and he carries a donkey (from the greengrocer) on his back!

The sight of this makes all his employers erupt with laughter and they each offer him regular employment - which he accepts with the proviso that on Saturday he will stay in bed all day. "Oh, Jack! You're such a clever boy!" says his mum. One point to note, throughout the whole book Jack doesn't open his eyes once!Vivian French's books include "Jackson's Juniors", "Under the Moon", "Zenobia and Mouse", "Mary Poggs and the Sunshine", "Once Upon a Time", "Why the Sea is Salt", "Princess Primrose", "Baker Ben", "Doctor Elsie", "A Song for Little Toad", "Caterpillar, Caterpillar" (shortlisted for the 1993 Emil/Kurt Maschler Award), "The Apple Trees" and "Spider Watching". Russel Ayto has illustrated "Quacky-Quack-Quack!", which was shortlisted for the Mother Goose Award and the Smarties Prize.