The black-and-white drawings by Brand’s cousin and well-known illustrator Edward Ardizzone perfectly suit the tale. Christianna Brand’s writing is charming and droll in a quintessentially British way. This collection of three stories - Nurse Matilda, Nurse Matilda Goes to Town, and Nurse Matilda Goes to Hospital - describes the amusing encounters of stern but good-hearted (and magical) Nurse Matilda and the unruly and boisterous Brown children. When the children have learned all seven lessons, when they no longer need her but want her to stay all the same, then she will leave - but no sooner. Nurse Matilda announces that the children need to learn seven lessons: to go to bed when told, to not gobble their meals, to do their lessons as asked, to get up when called, to close doors after themselves, to dress nicely when needed, and to refrain from running away. It is none other than Nurse Matilda, who has come to be a nanny to the exceedingly naughty Brown children. Her most prominent feature is a large front tooth that “stuck out like a tombstone over her lower lip.” She carries a big black stick and wears a fierce expression on her wrinkled face. The children’s overwhelmed parents had no idea where such a person was to be found, but - lo and behold! - a small, stout, incredibly ugly woman with eyes like black buttons and a nose like two potatoes appears at their door unbidden. Their parting suggestion is that the family is in need of Nurse Matilda. One day, all the nannies and governesses of the Brown family suddenly give notice, declaring that they can’t stand the children’s mischief any longer and are going away. The children are terribly, terribly naughty. There’s also the Baby, with its nappy falling down around its chubby pink knees.

There are so many children in the Brown family that one can’t actually count them but only think of them in groups: the Big Ones, the Middling Ones, the Little Ones, the Littlest Ones, and so on. By Christianna Brand, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone

Nurse matilda the collected tales