Trevor is a pixie with an acute wind problem. The story explores how his unfortunate biological issue affects the village he lives in and how the other pixies finally come up with a way to use Trevor's bodily function to assist his community...

Trumping Trouser Trev could have been the perfect bedtime story for the little horror in your life. Who, at the tender age of... well, let's be frank, trumping is funny whatever age you are. I fondly remember laughing as my grandfather pretended to trump (although he wasn't always pretending). And I remember once on a family holiday he walked ahead, and seeing us catch up to him out of the corner of his eye, he let a series of loud blasts rise from his trousers... only to discover that it wasn't us behind him, but a middle-aged couple who didn't look amused and walked rather quickly past him.

I did have some serious issues with the way this book was written. It's laid out in verse, but the rhyming doesn't always work and, in addition, sometimes the first and second line rhyme, sometimes it's the first and third and other times it's the first and third as well as the second and fourth. In truth, I found it really hard to read in rhyme - but it works well if you just read it as a straight story.

It's a shame that an editor didn't gave it a quick read over before it was published, as for such a short book there are a few too many errors. The book also mixes past and future tenses in the same segments - but maybe I'm being a bit of a grammar nazi.

Possibly the reason for all these faults lies in the fact that this is released through self-publishing house Author House. I don't have any issues with self publishing - in fact some of the most enjoyable books I've read of late have been published this way - it's just that someone should have pointed out to Bonnie Reynolds that she should have stuck to one style of verse, as it makes it almost impossible to read out loud.

Sarah Waterfield's illustrations are spot on for the story and I look forward to seeing more of her work in children's books in the future.

Overall, with the lumps knocked out of it, this would have been an essential purchase for parents. As it stands it's a fine tale, just not what it could have been.

6

Nick Smithson