Operation Ward Ten

Agatha Bilke, the world’s most awful child, is admitted to the Rottington Hospital where she engages in a series of situations as horrible as the girl herself – including ambulance stealing and a particularly gut-wrenching piece of surgery. She also falls in love.

This is a story full of caricatures, with some of the best names I’ve encountered in children’s fiction: I mean, how good is a name like Matron Cakebread or sickly child, Cauliflower Trinkle? The characters behind the names are no disappointment. It’s the language that makes this story so clever. The narrative manages to maintain a head in the clouds distance from reality which allows Pattenden to get away with some slightly sick episodes and character traits, with the coolness of humour that comes out of detachment from reality.

And those one-liners: ‘Lynda Peanuts was attached – literally and emotionally – to a drip’; ‘Agatha, in the eyes of her parents (plus the law and society as a whole), was a failure’; ‘He sighed, paused for dramatic effect and made a noise with his throat much like the noise of a small dog eating meringues’. You’ll forgive me for quoting a few – and there’s more where they came from.