Book Review - The Parent Agency

I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of "The Parent Agency" by David Baddiel (hence the cover and graphics) and while I read it quite a while ago, its unfortunately taken me ages to get around to writing about it!

Now published, the cover looks more like this:

It is available from Amazon and at the time of publishing this post, costs just £6! The Parent Agency. This book is by David Baddiel, as I mentioned. He's published three other books for adults, but this is his first for kids.

As I'm obviously not a kid myself, its hard to judge it completely. I found the book pretty funny and the story line was actually really good. There were times when I found some of the language and expressions a bit tiresome and repetitive, but I'm sure that's not something that most people would notice, especially kids.

Barry Bennett hates being called Barry. In fact it’s number 2 on the list of things he blames his parents for, along with 1) ‘being boring’ and 3) ‘always being tired’.
But there is a world, not far from this one, where parents don’t have children. That’s far too random for something so big and important. In this world, children are allowed to choose their parents.
For Barry Bennett, this world seems like a dream come true. Only things turn out to be not quite that simple…

The start seemed a little slow getting going, but then once it did, I found it more enjoyable. It's an easy read and I actually completed it in one day - a train journey to and from London in fact. The storyline IS predictable, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. In fact, at the end, I still got a little choked up - perhaps because I am a parent. I do think its something that Megan would enjoy reading (she's 9, nearly 10) but I'm not so sure about Lily at only 6. I also think that perhaps its a little more geared to boys, though I'm sure girls would like it too. I'm definitely glad I got to read it and would happily recommend it to others.