The Fidgety Itch, by Lucy Davey & Katz Cowley

Down beneath the fru-fru trees
Timpkin was gleefully
gobbling his cheese,
when something began to bother his knees.

Poor Timpkin! When a mouse finds some cheese, he doesn’t want to put it down, not even to scratch the most fidgety itch. So he calls for help. Feather McDoo flies in to help. Now Timpkin is feeling better, but not poor Feather. She has an itch that ‘jiggles and tickles like porcupine prickles’. Next comes Possum. And…you guessed it…he develops an itch too! But when Fuzzy O’Hare arrives and develops an itch of his own, who will scratch it? Illustrations are in ‘watercolour and mosquito sweat’! The animals have very expressive faces and body language, reflecting the irritation and the relief of terrible itches.

There’s nothing worse than an itch that’s inconvenient to reach to scratch. And there’s nothing like the relief of having that itch scratched. The Fidgety Itch grows a chain of cooperative scratchers all happy to be helping out. Readers will enjoy finding the itch-maker on each opening. The text is in rhyme and cumulative, and full of interesting words, just made for repeating. As well as the rhyme, there’s repetition and alliteration. Recommended for pre-schoolers and early primary readers.

The Fidgety Itch

The Fidgety Itch, Lucy Davey, ill Katz Cowley
Scholastic NZ
2010 ISBN: 9781869439675

review by Claire Saxby, Children’s Author
www.clairesaxby.com

This book can be purchased in good bookstores, or online from Fishpond.