Take a look inside The Grunts in a Jam - and win a copy! - Nosy Crow Skip to content
Posted by Tom, August 12, 2014

Take a look inside The Grunts in a Jam – and win a copy!

Next month we’re incredibly excited to be publishing The Grunts in a Jam, the HILARIOUS third book in the brilliant Grunts series, written by Philip Ardagh and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. And today, not ONLY can you read the book’s opening for the first time – you can ALSO win a copy!

The gloriously grubby Grunt family head to a country fair so Mrs Grunt’s mother can enter her homemade jam in the Preserves, Jams and Jellies Competition. What could possibly go wrong…?

Well, plenty (this IS the Grunts we’re talking about). Add a nose-biting squirrel, escaped bees, rogue fireworks and crashing biplanes (AGAIN!) and you’ll see why poor Sunny and Mimi have a lot on their plate. And that’s BEFORE the Grunts end up in jail.

Here’s a very first look inside the book:

And you could win the book! To enter our competition, all you have to do is tweet your favourite joke from one of the first Grunts books, The Grunts in Trouble or The Grunts all at Sea, to @NosyCrowBooks (if it’s too long to fit in a tweet, feel free to take a picture, and if you can, try and fit in the hashtag #TheGrunts) – and we’ll pick our favourite at the end of this week.

Here are a few of my favourites from The Grunts in a Jam to get you started…


Mrs Grunt threw open a window at the side of the caravan and stuck her head out. “Keep the noise down, mister!” she yelled. “Some of us are trying to watch to the goldfish.”

This is an absurdist masterpiece, worthy of Monty Python, and I immediately hear it in the voice of Terry “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!” Jones.


Mr Grunt grunted, pulling a small woman’s purse from his trouser pocket. I don’t mean “a small woman’s-purse” in that the purse was small. I mean “a small-woman’s purse” in that the purse belonged to a small woman: Mrs Lunge. Mr Grunt had decided to look after her purse for her without wasting time by asking her first.

A classic of the form. And I find the name “Mrs Lunge” sort of inexplicably funny.


To say that Mr Grunt was lucky might be a bit of an exaggeration because a lucky man wouldn’t get chased by bees and end up tripping over a rope and setting off a load of fireworks including the prototype Oomph 5, which in turn brought down a plane.

This builds and builds to a fantastic comic climax, and then there is an almost bathos-like effect to the fantastically abrupt, hilariously casual, ending.


The Grunts were in a jam, or, to be more accurate, they were in a holding cell underneath a courtroom.

This needs no explanation. It is a formally perfect joke.

So, what could be easier? Tweet us your favourite line from Book 1 or 2 and win Book 3!

And if you can’t BEAR the the uncertainty, you can also pre-order The Grunts in a Jam here.

Good luck!

Have you heard about our upcoming children’s publishing conference? Find out more and buy tickets here.

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