Turkey Hurly-Burly 
Annelies Judson  Nikki Slade Robinson    

 

Turkey Hurly-Burly 
Annelies Judson,
Ill. Nikki Slade Robinson 
Scholastic (2025)
Picture book
Paperback, 32 pages
ISBN 978 1 77543 910 3 

‘A rampaging herd of turkeys,           

that numbered in the thirties,

rampaged towards the field of play.’

Turkey Hurly-Burly is a funny picture book which cries out to be read aloud.

When Miss Burton asked her class to suggest a classroom pet, she did her best to reject unsuitable creatures such as lunch-eating rats and book-eating goats. Unfortunately, she agreed to a pair of turkeys, Jake and Jenny. Eggs were laid and, in due course, there were lots of turkeys; in fact, ‘a flock, squashed beside the office block.’ When the fence gave way under the extreme turkey pressure, the entire flock of turkeys ‘went storming straight towards the children playing games outside.’

What follows is a comic catastrophe of epic proportions, fought out on the playing fields of New Zealand.

‘It was a turkey-teacher-student free-for-all.’

Not only does Annelies Judson relate a war story worthy of Homer; she also spins her saga in verse. (There is also a very appropriate and funny conclusion, which is more than Homer managed.) Best of all, Turkey Hurly-Burly scans perfectly, so that it can be recited, declaimed or sung.

Then there are the colour illustrations.  Nikki Slade Robinson has created marvellously exaggerated turkeys - all throbbing wattles and bulging eyes – generating mayhem as they forage for school lunches. The pictures portraying the charge of the turkeys are eye-wateringly funny.

The result is an ideal book for reading aloud – or even singing aloud.

 

Trevor Agnew 
9 Aug 2025    [Review 3789]