Nurse Matilda Goes to Hospital

Nurse Matilda #3

by Christianna Brand, E. Ardizzone (Illustrator)

'Joanna had scraped up the uneaten rice pudding from all the plates and stuffed it into a spare pillow case. Louisa and Rebecca had collected the bunches of grapes which the patients' kind relatives had brought them, and were treading them into wine in the hospital hip-bath. Daniel had swapped round all the charts at the heads of the patients' beds which told what was wrong with them, and added a few suggestions of his own. Romilly had turned the Little Ones' cots upside down and made sort of wooden cages out of them; and the Little Ones were pretending to be in a zoo. All the other children were doing simply dreadful things too.' The Brown children have feigned illness and been taken to hospital but with Nurse Matilda running the show they have little chance of keeping up their antics for long.

Genres: Fantasy, Classics, Childrens, Middle Grade, British Literature, Humor

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Christianna Brand (December 17, 1907 - March 11, 1988) was a crime writer and children's author. Brand also wrote under the pseudonyms Mary Ann Ashe, Annabel Jones, Mary Roland, and China Thomson.

She was born Mary Christianna Milne in 1907 in Malaya and spent her early years in India. She had a number of different occupations, including model, dancer, shop assistant and governess.

Her first novel, Death in High Heels, was written while Brand was working as a salesgirl. In 1941, one of her best-loved characters, Inspector Cockrill of the Kent County Police, made his debut in the book Heads You Lose. The character would go on to appear in seven of her novels. Green for Danger is Brand’s most famous novel. The whodunit, set in a World War 2 hospital, was adapted for film by Eagle-Lion Films in 1946, starring Alastair Sim as the Inspector. She dropped the series in the late 1950s and concentrated on various genres as well as short stories. She was nominated three times for Edgar Awards: for the short stories "Poison in the Cup" (EQMM, Feb. 1969) and "Twist for Twist" (EQMM, May 1967) and for a nonfiction work about a Scottish murder case, Heaven Knows Who (1960). She is the author of the children's series Nurse Matilda, which Emma Thompson adapted to film as Nanny McPhee (2005).

Her Inspector Cockrill short stories and a previously unpublished Cockrill stage play were collected as The Spotted Cat and Other Mysteries from inspector Cockrill's Casebook, edited by Tony Medawar (2002).

Series:
* Nurse Matilda
* Inspector Charlesworth
* Inspector Chucky
* Inspector Cockrill

Reviews

[Luisa Knight · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently read several stories with magical nannies coming to the rescue of families in need. I thought it would be fun to compare each of their pros and cons and see how they lined up ...

Nurse Matilda:
-Likable nanny.
-The children are naughtier in this book; doing things sometimes just for naughtiness’ sake (like throwing their porridge on the walls) but they always end up regretting their decisions and learning their lesson (I think the author was trying to be a little tongue-in-cheek with the kid’s actions).
-The book is really funny.
-I loved the writing style and the illustrations were great!
-The first book has a satisfying ending (books #2 and #3 are essentially repeats, but with different circumstances, so I would have rather liked to see the author use a different family to show that the children really had changed and weren’t back to their old antics again – still fun reads though).


Mrs. Piggle Wiggle:
-Likable “nanny.”
-The children have some common bad habits and learn their lessons nicely (actually, these stories are pretty practical and applicable, so if you have kids who are slow eaters, don’t pick up their toys, etc. there’s some good, fun lessons here).
-The book is pretty funny.
-I loved the writing style and the illustrations were great!
-I was satisfied with the ending.


Mary Poppins:
-I did not like the nanny (watch the movie instead, if you want to like Mary Poppins; Julie Andrews did a great job enhancing and making the character likable).
-There’s actually FOUR children and they all need some help with their behaviors and perspectives, but in the end, they learn too. (There’s one chapter in the book, Bad Tuesday, they I don’t recommend reading to your kids).
-I don’t remember thinking it was all that funny.
-I loved the writing style and the illustrations were great!
-I was not satisfied with the ending (Mary Poppins leaves, and rather than the family coming together (like in the movie), the mother calls for the cook to put the children to bed so she can be off to her dinner party).

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[Abigail · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nurse Matilda returns in her third and final adventure, taking the Brown children in hand once again when their naughty behavior wreaks havoc at the local hospital. Removed to the seashore in order to recuperate, the little Browns engage in another series of mischievous pranks, each one prolonged in a most uncomfortable way by Nurse Matilda’s magical black walking stick.

The sense of repetition in Nurse Matilda Goes to Hospital is even more pronounced than in the second title, rendering it somewhat tedious. The one humorous moment comes with the seashore tea-party given by Aunt Adelaide Stitch to her stuffy friends. But despite this entertaining episode, the third entry in this series felt completely flat to me, and I was forced to conclude that this and Nurse Matilda Goes to Town were superfluous repetitions, riding the coat-tails of the first book, and far too formulaic to truly move or entertain.

As mentioned in my review of the first two Nurse Matilda books, this was illustrated by the author's cousin, Edward Ardizzone, and was reprinted in 2005 (original publication year: 1975) to coincide with the release of the movie Nanny McPhee, which is based loosely upon the series.

[Isa · Rating 2 out of 5]

No.

[Tirzah Eleora · Rating 2 out of 5]

See my review for the second book in the series, Nurse Matilda Goes to Town. The exact same things apply to this one.

[Elizabeth S · Rating 3 out of 5]

By my count, we are up to 69 children now.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once upon a time there were a mother and a father called Mr and Mrs Brown and they had lots and lots of children; and all the children were terribly, terribly naughty.

If this had been published before I reached the age of double digits I would very possibly have enjoyed this hugely; after all, I remember thinking the first couple of Norman Hunter’s Professor Branestawm books were wildly witty. The first in Christianna Brand’s series, entitled simply <>Nurse Matilda<>, featured the titular nanny as the perfect nemesis for the extremely naughty children of the Brown household.

The metamorphosis she undergoes as her charges start to learn the error of their ways is shown to be, both literally and metaphysically, magical: the fearsome governess figure of Victorian experience – ably captured by the original Mary Poppins books and earlier by Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid in Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies – becomes the cuddly maternal archetype if and when the children reform their ways.

But by this, the third in the series, the well-tried formula has become stale and repetitive, as if the lessons not learned by the Brown tribe had not been learned by Brand either.

First of all, though, the title: this slightly misleads as it’s not our indomitable nanny who needs nursing; and secondly, the greater part of the narrative actually takes place in the seaside town of Puddleton-on-Sea where, unsurprisingly mayhem erupts when the Brown children go to stay in a hotel with Great Aunt Adelaide and her unfortunate charge Evangeline. But before that their escapades pranking local children have necessitated Nurse Matilda carting them off to hospital where – you guessed it – they turn everybody and everything upside down.

How many Brown offspring are there? The author challenges the reader to count, but they seem as numerous as grains of sand on the seashore. Little matter that they’re indistinguishable from each other, it’s the inventiveness of their practical jokes that one is expected to goggle at and the lack of awareness displayed by their victims, both young and old. But when Nurse Matilda raises her stick to bang the end on the ground, the Browns better beware.

For this, like the previous two titles in this series, is ultimately a morality tale: Be good, or your sins will find you out! And, in this case, the punishment will fit the crime – as we clearly see in the nightmarish sequence that leads, one hopes, to redemption.

Christianna Brand clearly enjoyed devising the several transgressions that appear in these pages and the catalogues of the youngsters’ misdemeanours are truly imaginative, though one would have to be of a certain age to find them screamingly funny. What Nurse Matilda seeks is that the children start to consider others, and especially the needs of the vulnerable – such as the smallest in the family – before she lets up on punishment:

‘The Baby! All this time the Baby hasn’t been with us. Where is the Baby?’ And a voice said, with a shake in it: ‘Yes, what’s happened to the Baby?’ And a voice said with a break in it: ‘All this time we’ve been thinking about our tired legs and our empty tummies – and forgotten all about the Baby . . .’ And a voice said with tears in it: ‘We’ve been selfish and beastly, just worrying about ourselves, and never ever given a thought to our own poor Baby . . .’

As a bedtime story for younger pre-teens, read aloud to them a chapter at a time, this could well prove an ideal choice, aided by the pen drawings by Edward Ardizzone, the author’s cousin; an adult reader would however be forgiven for finding the whole experience repetitive and tedious in the extreme.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. and Mrs. Brown's brood of children raise a ruckus during a visit to the hospital but are given a reprieve and allowed to spend time at their Great-Aunt Adelaide's summer cottage. Little do they know that Nurse Matilda is along to keep everything above board. This final tale in the Nurse Matilda series ends as the previous tales with the children being taught valuable life lessons before Nurse Matilda leaves them.

[Gabriela Freitas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Senti que esse livro, comparado com os outros da Babá Matilda, foi muito apressado. As crianças são muito levadas e demoram, de certa forma, para receber sua correção. Também percebi que a presença da Babá foi menos ligada às crianças nesse livro. De maneira geral foi uma boa leitura, mas não é meu favorito da série.

[Wolfie Smoke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as the first two but still worth the read!

[Cíntia · Rating 4 out of 5]

fofin demais

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still good fun, but I think this one is my least favorite of all the Nurse Matilda stories.

[Lillian Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nurse Matilda Goes to Hospital was enjoyable, but it had the same essential plot and elements of the first two books in the series, which made it a bit boring to read. There were different creative pranks and antics that the children used to cause trouble and the setting was different but it still followed the same basic trajectory: kids are naughty, Nanny McPhee comes and shows them the error in their ways by forcing them to be continuously naughty, so they learn their lesson.

I think the original Nurse Matilda is a fun, simple story that's good for children or anyone looking for an entertaining light read, but the following two books are too repetitive to be worth reading. I would not recommend Nurse Matilda Goes to Hospital to anyone, and I wish that the author had been a bit more creative with the continuation of the series.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it has a great message to children about learning to behave and be obedient and treat others kindly, it is much the dame as the other two Nurse Matilda books. I found that reading all three of them in a row got a little boring and monotonous. You would do well by reading only one or spacing them out with other books in between.

[Camille Andrea Tesoro · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first book of the series which brought the whole idea of Nanny Mcphee from the adapted movie entertains me more than the sequels. The sequels is very much paralleled to the first book therefore it lost its lust to provide an intriguing element for the readers to experience.

[Mckinley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fun - very much like first one, even same family. (Which would seem to go against the Nurse Matilda code.)
See Mary Poppins - nanny for troubled/troublesome families and children.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find more children in the Brown family mentioned in each Nurse Matilda book. No wonder they need some authority figure in their lives.

[Rachel Cohen]

It is definitely not as good as the movie, which I rarely say.