#411 - Nimmi‘s Dreadtastic Detective Days
by Shabnam Minwalla
“Nimmi‘s Dreadtastic Detective Days” by Shabnam Minwalla. Published by Talking Cub, the children’s imprint of Speaking Tiger. A hilarious story of Nimmi Daruwala who gets a chance to don the hat of a detective and solve the case of bursting beanbags.
This is the second book of the Nimmi series. The first book is “Nimmi’s Spectabulous School Days” which was thoroughly enjoyed by us. This book starts off with Nimmi Daruwala having a hard time being stuck at home thanks to an awfully green jelly that has upset her tummy badly. A week of absence at school and so many unexpected things have happened. The principal Mr Bakshi has ordered new beanbags for each class and has announced Cookaroo (a cooking competition) in the school for students of grade 6 and above. Grade 6 is under the radar now thanks to the new beanbags of their class being burst mysteriously on the day of their arrival itself! Nimmi is itching to go to school and try to solve this mystery. After all one of her dreams is to be a detective some day! This seems to be a perfect opportunity. Who could have done it and why is what she needs to find out.
The dreaded part is the cooking competition though. Nimmi hardly knows anything about cooking. She finds that most people have already formed pairs for the teams and she is left with just two choices. Either her chief tormentor Sumit who never lets go of a chance to tease her or Kabir who is the new boy in class from America about whom she knows nothing. She ends up choosing Kabir much to mean Alisha Dubash’s annoyance. Sophia, her best friend from the past is still part of Alisha’s gang. Nimmi continues to miss her but finds unexpected friends in the class nerds Diya and Kavya. Their class teacher Miss Atmaja continues to be as ghastly as ever. She is still wary of Nimmi and considers her as a troublemaker. Will Nimmi be able to crack the mystery of the bean bags? Can she and Kabir pull off a decent dish at Cookaroo? Read the story full of twists and turns as Nimmi tries her hand at new things in this book!
My nine year old and I had a whale of a time zipping through this amazing book. The plot is thick and filled with fun and endless laughter to the brim. We just couldn’t stop guffawing. The characters are way too funny and their antics are quite amusing. My son loved the story and he seemed to have a twinkle in his eye whenever Sumit entered the scene :P Sumit has become his second favourite character in the series after the obvious choice of Nimmi as the first. He now demands for a “Nimmi Bachao Alisha Hatao” campaign based on a book that we had read in the recent past called “Munni Monster”. Children and their associations spanning across books never fails to amuse me! We have been on a Nimmi reading spree and have finished reading the next book in the series as I write this :)
Recommended Age
The book is apt for children aged 9 and above.
Reasons to Read
Same as book 1 of the series. For some brilliant wordplay and generous dose of humour which every school going child will be able to relate to and relish :D
Where to buy from?
The publishers Talking Cub here.