Christianna Brand Quotes

“She wore a rusty black dress right up to the top of her neck and right down to her button boots, and a rusty black jacket and a rusty black bonnet.”

With her magical walking stick, Nurse Matilda teaches important lessons like going to bed when you’re told, not chomping your food, closing doors after yourself, and putting on your best clothes when you’re told.

“She was very ugly - the ugliest person you ever saw in your life! Her hair was scraped into a bun, sticking straight out at the back of her head like a teapot handle”

″...all trimmed with trembly black jet, with her teapot-handled of a bun sticky out at the back.”

“And her face was round and wrinkly, and she had eyes like two little black boot-buttons. And her nose! - she had a nose like two potatoes.”

“And as they spoke -- lo and behold! -- there was a knock at the door, and there stood a small, stout figure dressed in rusty black; and she said, ‘Good evening, Mr and Mrs Brown, I am Nurse Matilda.’ Well! She was very ugly -- the ugliest person you ever saw in your life!”

“Once upon a time there was a huge family of children; and they were terribly, terribly naughty.”

The Brown children are the most ill-behaved, mischievous, naughty little children in all the world, and the only nanny who can possibly control them or teach them any manners is Nurse Matilda.

“But what you noticed most of all was that she had one huge front Tooth, sticking right out like a tombstone over her lower lip. ”

“And she carried a small brown case and a large black stick, and she had a very fierce expression indeed on her wrinkly, round, brown face.”