"Can we have the story about Milly Molly Mandy Gets Squashed By An Elephant?"

[StFrancesofZooville]

funnily enough I couldn't find it in the book

Do any of you know it?

oh I loved milly molly mandy and her red stripy dress

oh gawd who is everyone?

go out for the day and I can never catch up when I get back

Who is who?

No, can't say that one is any of the 3 books we have here.

Much to my surprise, ds loved Milly Molly Mandy when I tried it out on him last year. It has such simple charm.

We all adore MMM, she is the absolute best thing ever, except maybe My Naughty Little Sister who might or might not pip her to the post

So what does it say about ds, psychologically, that he secretly wants to hear about his heroine Milly Molly Mandy getting crushed by the world's largest land mammal, hmm?

LOL St Frances, when I was a teenager I made up a story about Milly Molly Mandy in the war in which a bomb fell on the nice white cottage with the thatched roof. How old is your ds?

Incidentally, I have posted this before and never had an answer:
How come, when the books state quite plainly that MMM wore pink and white striped cotton in summer and red serge in winter, do all the pictures show her wearing stripes????
(Is anyone else bothered by this?)

He is 3.5. I don't reckon Joyce whatserface knew how to draw serge. She certainly didn't know how to draw human beings without making them look like hamsters who have just secreted an extremely tasty sunflower seed in each cheek pouch.

LOL. Certainly the stripy dresses are good for colouring in.
You are right about the hamster faces, but now I come to think of it, everyone in my family has hamster cheeks so I probably just thought that was normal

Were your family the models, do you think?

Hey I have some excellent MMM trivia that I have been dying to share but was a bit short of MMM afficionadoes to reveal it to

You know when the roof blows off and they have to go for Mr Critch the Thatcher? They are buiding some new houses down in Fontwell, Sussex, and they have thatched rooves, bizarrely. We stopped to watch them doing it and the guy's van said Critch on it! So we reckon he must have been a descendant of the original thatcher who inspired JLB. MMM lived near the South Downs, didn't she?

I think its in the children's story compendium - y'know, the one with the My Naughty Little Sister story where she gets sat on by a gorilla whilst selling national secrets to the Germans?

Do you think he's had a dream that sort of amalgamated The Elephant and the Baby (? the "rumpeta rumpeta" one), MMM and the Tiger Who Came to Tea?

It was most likely an Unsuitable Story Tape we borrowed from the library recently which had pirates and elephants that squashed people and all sorts

Oh and Emmy Lou

are you still loving ArtBrut?

yes the dress thing has always bothered me mightily

ds does like MMM but has never asked to hear of her being crushed by an elephant, it must be said. He is always particulalry impressed by the one in which she becomes an investment banker, expanding on her initial investment of a penny sixfold. Which is a worrying portent, really.

I have MMM hair, it must be said. All my life I have been trying to fight it but perhaps I should just embrace it.

I LOVE My Naughty Little Sister , luckily so do the boys - their favourite is the one with Bad Harry's birthday party where they sneak into the pantry and eat a whole trifle

ahhhh.... 2 of my favourite stories!

I have just read My Naughty Little Sister to DS1 and I was surprised to find out how naughty she wasn't - seems like a normal little girl to me

I loved MMM - my Mum has recently told ne it used to drive her mad to read it aloud though so maybe I'll skip that

i love my little sister too. i like the one with grandads red holly berries.
and the one with the nice godmothers fiance making toffee on the door knob.

Fillyjonk - embrace the hair do, but couldn't you put a tad more effort into it and embrace the dress too?

Anyone got any candy striped or serge remnants to help Fillyjonk complete her MMM look...

Yes the trifle one is superb

we are also very fond of the one where she bites "Father Christmas's good old hand"

and the one where they find the workmen's packed lunches and throw them all about

oh they are all marvellous, MMM and MNLS both

Ah alexsmum it was a hook on the back of the kitchen door, not a knob

and I thought you were going to be hongkongphooey?

hmm, what is serge come to think of it?
it sounds scratchy, like a hair shirt or similar.

We even adapted the Get Better Box idea of Mrs Coacoa-Jones. We have a basket filled with little things to play with for any "poorly not well girls".

Seems to have been superceeded by Cbeebies these days though.

hmmm

well I do like red

but my legs are not what they once were

maybe a nice serge dress over jeans, I find wearing dresses with jeans removes the hard choices from my wardrobe.

I was thinking it sounded like what nuns wear

It definitely has a hardline Catholic feel to it, serge

I was thinking it sounded like what nuns wear

It definitely has a hardline Catholic feel to it, serge