Heard It in the Playground

The title says it all, hot scraps of gossip, current jokes, puzzles and word games - every bit of it child-generated. It gives us temporary membership of that most exclusive of clubs: childhood. I loved. 'The Sale of Work - Ahlberg's unique interpretation of such a familiar phrase reminds us yet again how we make assumptions about word-meanings. 'The Ghost Teacher', too, gliding around the empty school in effortless silence is made from quite surreal word pictures. Best of the lot for me was 'The Mad Professor's Daughter' - a sinister, well-paced warning about meeting a girl with 'grass-green eyes'.