Frank is named after his Dad, who is named after his dad, and so on down the ancestry line. This shared name will prove to be a lucky thing for the youngest Frank, as he inherits nearly half a million pounds from a step grandmother he never knew he had. The money is expected to be spent on a grandfather he never knew he had.
Having an unstable family life and no friends has Frank looking for reasons to escape his home life and dive into a project. This project is a grumpy, and surprisingly hairy old man, named Frank. The grandfather he never met. Perhaps not just a project but a hopeful search for stability and family and ultimately, love and attention.
Resistance to Frank Jr Jr’s bucket list idea is just one of the hurdles met in this fantastic celebration of life and family. Frank is overly keen to impress his Grandfather and ensure he has the ultimate experiences, everything from swimming with Dolphins (not what you are thinking), to parkour and hot air balloon rides. Frank’s resistance can be understood given the circumstances but he soon warms to Frank Jr Jr and they soon come to appreciate and look forward to these times together.
Touching on elements of dementia, this is done with humour and a deeper understanding throughout. There are moments, when Frank Sr is lost inside a memory or forgets how to get home, that might seem heart achingly familiar to some. It is all cautiously and caring lay written.
Of course I laughed and cried all the way through, bringing back fond memories of her previous titles having had the same effect on me.

The Queen of feel-good reads, Jenny Pearson is back ready to wrap you up in her signature style of humour and heart. This is the ultimate comfort read; a book that feels like the biggest and loveliest of hugs. The story sensitely handles loneliness, old-age and dementia on an epic adventure shared between one boy and his Grandpa.

Expect non-stop hilarity and comedy capers of collosal proportions – we’re talking hot air balloon ride disasters, dog chases, dolphin swimming and dips in duckponds, yet tender moments so touching you’ll be reaching for the tissues. Buckle your seat belt for the ultimate bucket list and one boy’s discovery that happiness is, in fact, priceless.

Life isn’t great for for 11 year old Frank John Davenport. Constantly moved around by his Ricky and Bianca-esque parents, he hasn’t bonded with any of his class-mates at his most recent school and is facing a summer of loneliness and watching his parents argue over his dad’s failed ‘get rich quick’ schemes.

Wideboy Frank Davenport Senior is always chasing some ridiculous money-making project and the family spend their time evading his debtors and disgruntled customers from his dodgy deals, hence the endless moving around.

So when Frank Junior inherits stacks of cash (£462,000 to be exact) from a step-grandma (Nora) he didn’t know he had, life is looking up, big time! But the money comes with STRICT instructions; it is to be used primarily towards the continuing care and well-being of Frank Senior Senior who resides at Autumnal Leaves Residential Home.

Step-grandma Nora writes from beyond the grave;

‘with Frank Senior on his own and not always in full possession of all his faculties, I leave you this money to look after him. He doesn’t think he needs anybody. But like most things, he’s wrong about that. Please show him the care he needs and, if you do, I promise there will be a reward for you too.’

Frank’s parents are desperate to get their hands on the money and a deep-seated family rift is uncovered. Dad makes his feelings about Frank Senior Senior abundantly clear and forbids his son from seeing his Grandpa. But with the promise of an additional mysterious reward, Frank can’t help himself. With dad busy ‘seeing a man about a dog’ and mum perfecting her back-hand with tennis coach, supertanned Tony, he pays Grandpa Frank a visit at Autumnal Leaves – after all, he’s not the sort of kid to ignore the instructions of a dead step-grandma.

Frank tells his Grandpa about the money and convinces him he needs in on the action. He quickly compiles a Bucket List of all the ways he can spend the money and have fun whilst looking after his grandpa. Hot-air balloon rides, monster-truck lessons and epic parkour experiences to name a few. Look forward to meeting a cast of comedic characters along the way like Balloon Dave, Brenda, an unlikely elderly wheelchair stunt woman and Florence Kay, coach to an OAP’s synchronised swimming team – expect sequin-clad octagenarians!

From the outset, it’s pretty clear to the reader what Grandma Nora had in mind for her mystery reward but it’s made even more lovely going along for the ride with Frank as he chases the dream and seeing his realisation that money can’t buy you happiness and that caring for others is in itself an extremely rewarding experience.

Seeing Frank find creative ways to bridge the generation gap and watching his relationship blossom with his Grandpa was very touching. The way Pearson portrays the onset of dementia is extremely moving and very sensitely handled for the Middle Grade audience. I think adults readers are most likely to be those to shed a tear due to the age of our parents and possible experience of the heartbreak of seeing a loved one coping with the illness.

They say that laughter is the best medicine and Grandpa Fran’s Great Big Bucket List cheered me up no-end on a miserable Autumn afternoon. Jenny Pearson has such a talent for reminding us to live our best lives and appreciate simple, ordinary everyday magic. As with her previous two books, I was left feeling refreshed and ready to face everything, every page glows with positivity.

Jenny Pearson is the queen of comedy writing that bursts with empathy and a whole lot of heart! Grandpa Frank’s Great Big Bucket List highlights the value of cross-generational relationships and how rewarding it is to look after someone else. Hilarious and touching, this is a book to smile through.

With a dying grandmother’s last request, a grandfather he never knew he had and a whole heap of money, Frank Davenport’s life is about to change forever!

Anyone would think a huge inheritance would make life easier but when Frank’s parents, who struggle with their own finances, insist there must be a mistake and his Dad should inherit the money instead, Frank has to come up with a plan to keep hold of every penny and use it for what it was intended – looking after his grandpa. He decides the best way to do this is to create a bucket list – a list of amazing, exhilarating, once-in-a-lifetime experiences that Grandpa will never forget.

Cue laughable mishaps, exciting adventures and some really tender moments as Frank gets to know his grouchy yet charming grandpa. Their relationship proves to be something very special. Will they be able to keep ticking items off the bucket list until they reach the final goal – repairing their family – or will it all go catastrophically wrong?

Don’t miss this wonderful third book from Jenny Pearson – a great accompaniment to The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates & The Incredible Record Smashers!

Thank you to Usborne for this incredible book!

The biggest perk of my job as a teacher is sharing the books I love with my class and seeing the children being hooked in too, so that they sit in spellbound silence until the end of a chapter, whereupon they will burst into calls for me to carry on reading. One such book is The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates – the author’s debut title – which I read through the magic of Teams to those of my learners who were at home during the lockdown at the start of the year. Such was the enjoyment that it generated that I had parents email me with pictures of their children listening rapt in front of their laptops, and comments to say how much they themselves were enjoying the readings.

What makes that book, and its sister title The Incredible Record Smashers, such a fabulous read is that rare blend of perfectly balanced laugh-out-loud hilarity and moments of intense pathos, and I was hoping for more of the same in this, the author’s latest title. What I found is exactly that – a story which genuinely made me laugh at times, brought a lump to my throat at others, but ultimately left me with a lovely warm glow and the confidence that actually human beings on the whole have the potential to be the kind and compassionate individuals we hope they will.

Our story opens with our narrator Frank explaining that he is the latest in a line of Franks, with the name passed from father to son as in many families, but unlike in many families it is an action that his parents suddenly have cause to regret. Following the death of a step-grandmother that up until now Frank has known nothing about, he has inherited almost half a million pounds from her, along with the strict instruction to use it to take care of Grandpa Frank and the promise that by doing so Frank will gain a reward. With young Frank’s parents convinced that there has been some sort of terrible error, they immediately set about trying to relieve their son of his inheritance.

But convinced that the reward must be even more money, young Frank is determined to do the right thing to earn it and tracks down his grandfather to the Autumnal Leaves Residential Home, where he goes to visit him. Expecting a warm welcome, Frank is a little taken aback when his grandpa is asleep when he arrives and on waking up is not filled with enthusiasm at being visited, especially as Frank has eaten his biscuits. But Frank soon realises that Grandpa has good reason not to be filled with the joys of spring after being widowed, and determines to create a bucket list of experiences to make the old man happy using the money he has been left.

As he sets about organising a series of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for the two of them to share and gets to know his grandfather, his parents continue to do their best to relieve him of Grandma Nora’s money. Can Frank make his grandpa happy again and earn his reward, or will his parents put a stop to their shared adventure and new found relationship?

As with Jenny’s other titles, this is a brilliantly funny story which will have younger readers in fits at the various antics of Frank and his grandfather, through his well-intended but often ill thought-out plans. But, for me, what makes this book stand head-and-shoulders above other funny titles is the interplay between the relationships of the members of Frank’s family and those they encounter. When we meet him, Frank has moved house countless times as a result of his father’s shady business deals and has, quite understandably, had enough of not settling anywhere long enough to make friends. He is in desperate need of feeling both wanted and loved by his peers and his parents, and in his new relative he sees the possibility of gaining both through his not entirely altruistic actions.

Grandpa Frank, on the other hand, initially does not want to get to know the child of his estranged son, but goes along with Frank’s ideas in the hopes of getting his own hands on the boy’s inheritance, believing it will allow him to buy the happiness he has lost since the death of his beloved Nora. Although children very often identify family and friends as their true sources of happiness when we discuss what makes us happy in class, so many of them equate material wealth with that emotion and the book carefully and subtly shows them that that is not often the case. So much PSHE work could come as a result of discussions around this book in class and I am sure that many teachers in year 4 upwards will turn to this book for that reason, in addition to it simply being a fabulously entertaining read.

I have promised my class that we will share Freddie Yates after our current story, as part of their involvement in the Laugh Out Loud Awards and am desperately hoping that I will be able to squeeze this in later in the year after its release on February 3rd next year- if not, I will be reading it to next year’s class because it is too wonderful for me to keep to myself. If you have not as yet read any of Jenny’s books, I suggest you spoil yourself by getting this pre-ordered and catching up on her first two reads while you are waiting.

Enormous thanks, as always, go to publisher Usborne and Net Galley for my advance read ahead of publication. A tremendous 5 out of 5 stars.