Another First

Friends, Romans, etc., I've been reading a Western-like story set in Ancient Greece. In it something comes up missing, someone threatens to kill, someone falls in love??, and someone greases a goat. It's all about a missing piece of the puzzle that a young man needs to cure himself of a boil on the bum. The youngster with the boil is Tutor Timo and he can't remember the missing item to make his Auntie Aspic's Brilliant Boil Balsam.

It is all contained in a children's book by Ali Aardwolff (pen name of Georgina Titmus), Nugget's Bum Deal. Tutor Timo is going to kill Nugget the Chicken, pet of Colin Plato, who was asked by Timo to talk to his dead Auntie Aspic and find out the last ingredient of the elixir needed for the Boil Balsam. Colin must find the one scroll of Wiseman Hermit Tottle that told how to talk to dead people. But Timo can't wait and wants to use the only other tried and true method to cure a boil - sacrifice a chicken. And so he goes after Nugget with his pop's battle axe.

Colin finds the proper scroll on contacting a person who has died and gets his girlfriend (Iris Tottle) and his young brother (Gifted Doug) to participate in a seance of sorts. It is at Grandfather Yannis' where Colin finds Iris while the Grandpa greases the goat named Frittata.

I will not spoil the ending by discussing it here in case of ruining the story for someone else. I will say that I enjoyed reading this book for children and will recommend it to my great-grandsons. It was funny, inventive, ridiculous, and entertaining, a fine story for the young and young at heart.