Fabulous Phartlehorn Affair by Megan Peel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Fabulous Phartlehorn Affair is all about musical phartling – which is a bit phantastic. The affair involves a mysterious mountain kingdom, a fantastical musical instrument known as the ‘Phartlehorn’ and the downside to being good with your, um, downside.
As Roald Dahl taught us with his ‘Fizz Pops’ and his ‘Whizz-bangs’, trumps and farts and guffs can be very very funny. Peel goes to town with lots of trump based wordplay and farting themed moments. There’s a lot here that will reward a confident reader as they explore the puns and jokes that abound in this text. It could also work very well as a read-aloud book for parents to share with their children; there’s something inherently funny about realising that grown ups experience their own fizz pops and whizz-bangs, and I imagine a good reader could have a lot of fun in performing the more, er, aural moments 😉
I liked this book a lot, but I thought it struggled a little bit in places. The illustration of how Bruno’s mother floated off just didn’t work for me and detracted from the text. Additionally I could have done with a little bit more balance in the final section but it’s key to remember that that’s from my perspective, and not from a phartling obsessed ten year-olds 🙂
The Fabulous Phartlehorn Afair is a phunny, phantastical book about pharting. There’s not that many of them around and so this is well worth a look.
Daisy May Johnson 
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