‘…he farted so hard he blew the roof right off the house!’ –Words that make you stumble in picture books

Recently over on Notes from the Slushpile there has been a series of blogs about ‘Words that move’ in childrens book. It’s great reading about emotionally moving children books, which mean so much to people. I loved the posts so much I thought about the other side of the coin, the books that make you stumble because they have unexpected twist.

Here are some of the books that have ambushed me and my husband making us stumble over the words as we read them whist squirming with embarrassment and shock.  Without exception all of the following books have become firm family favourites and are read over and over, which is a testament to great courage and writing from their creators.   

CAUTION THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Dr Dog – Babbet Cole

This book arrived quite unexpectantly in the post, from a friend who found it whilst clearing out her teenagers rooms. She said it was her children’s favourite book so sent it to us for our two small people.  It’s about the Gumboyle’s who don’t look after their children but thankfully their family dog is a doctor. So Dr Dog goes about looking after the children after they get ill and teaching them useful lessons like, ‘Don’t scratch your bum and suck your thumb’ as you’ll get worms.  Unfortunately despite Dr Dog telling the Gumboyle parents that they need to look after their family, Grandad dangerous gas build up and he… ‘farted so hard he blew the roof right off the house!’ This is it the moment when my husband chocked, squirmed and looked at me in panic – I very helpfully creased up in laughter.  Needless to say this book found a special place in the heart of my fart obsessed three year old boy!

The Horrible Book – Wayne Anderson

This is one of my daughters most treasured books, so much so she took it in to school for show and tell – after which I was asked by the teachers ‘please don’t bring in books again’!  I guess you could say that the clue was in the title – and you’d be right. So we’re reading the book for the first time and increasingly thinking – is this really for children. Its starts in the graveyard where something has risen from the graves and goes on a spree, steeling bits if machines and animals ‘It had no body, but it has made off with our fins and skins, our scales and tales!’ say the fish.  On the last page you eventually catch up with the thing with no body to find it has used all the animal parts to become SOME BODY.

Tadpole's Promise- Jeanne Willis & Tony Ross

This one is my sister’s nomination; she was a nanny when she had as she puts it an ‘EWWWW’ moment with this book. It’s a charming tale about the friendship and love between the tadpole  who falls in love with his ‘beautiful rainbow’  caterpillar. The Caterpillar loves the tadpole too calling him her ‘shinny black pearl’ but gets annoyed about the tadpoles ever changing appearance and making him promise he’ll stop changing. Anyway the Caterpillar becomes a butterfly and comes back to her beloved – frog, but he doesn’t recognise her and ’faster than she could say ‘pearl’, the frog leapt up and swallowed her…’ the poor frog waits wondering what ever happened to his beautiful rainbow. 

The Story of the Little Mole who knew it was None of his Business – Werner Holzwarth & Wolf Erlbruch

This book was given to my son on his third birthday by his godmother. We sat down and read it to him, he loved it instantly and still does. I must say that as parents when we first read it we didn’t know what to say or think. But now we LOVE this book; its humour, its illustrations; is conclusion. I have also been reliably informed that it is used for educational purposes to…

The mole one day wakes up and sticks his head out of his hole, when someone does their business on him The mole is understandable quite put out but ‘he was so short-sighted that he couldn’t see anyone around.’ So he goes off to find out who did poo on his head, he asks all manner of beast all of who demonstrate it can’t have been them by doing their business in front of him, splattering the poor mole in more unpleasant stuff. Eventually with the help of some flies the mole exacts his revenge. ‘Quick as a flash he climbed on to the kennel..(and pling- A tiny black sausage landed on top of the dog’s head.’

…the educational purpose is to teach people about poo as the book is quite detailed about the properties of each animal’s excrement. 

Finally back to Babette Cole – Mummy Laid an Egg

This is our most lent out book, it is borrowed by parents who are expecting, and parents who are teaching their small people about the birds and the bees.  All I can say is that I didn’t read this before reading it with the kids, and ended up the colour of a beetroot.  Well pictures say a thousand words so here…

Hope you enjoyed this post, and please do comment on any of the books, or if you have any books that have made you squirm I'd love to know! 

It’s About to Get Cold; Here Comes the Snow Queen

It’s About to Get Cold; Here Comes the Snow Queen

The temperature is about dive in 2013 as Hans Christian-Anderson’s terrifying villain is making an appearance in not one but TWO animated adventures.

The first to hits screen will be the Russian made CGI Snow Queen, made by the up and coming Wizart Animation that was founded in 2007.  The Trailer has been realised and it look quite frankly amazing, visually stunning and dark too. Click here tosee Trailer

The next Snow Queen, animation adaptation is coming from the giant Disney corporation. Their project had a name change to FROZEN as Wizart had already pegged Snow queen. The project is further behind with a release date yet to be set but the stills look well stunning. Click here to go to theFROZEN blog

Usually the thought of snow makes me miserable, but I can make an exception here; bring on the snow!

Review of; Gramarye: The Journal by The Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tale and Fantasy

Review of; Gramarye: The first edition of the Journal by The Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tale and Fantasy

Once upon a time I was a student studying Art & Related Art’s at University College Chichester. It was here where I re-kindled my childhood love of fairy Tales. In a second year art project I had to produce works based on a book given to me by another student. The book in question was Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl. This lead to me immersing myself in fairy tales working my way back to the older and often more darker tales.

For my degree show I produced a collection of paintings that commented on the misuse, censoring and editing of fairy tales. Some of my pieces were brought by local modern Art collector Paul Wilson.

my degree show 'Lovetale' 2001

How strange then that eleven years later I discovered that the Sussex Centre for Folklore and Fairytale (or SCFF for short) is based at the very university where my fairy tale passion was reawakened.

Gramarye  is the first edition of the journal by The Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tale and Fantasy. I was disappointed to miss its launch in May, but did get my copy delivered by post and greatly enjoyed it. So I thought I’d do a little review.

Firstly let me point out that I approached the journal from the perspective of a fairy tale enthusiast NOT a scholar. 

Gramarye is firstly an aesthetically pleasing and well-constructed journal. It is a pleasure to read, with good size font and well considered illustrations to compliment the text. 

This first addition has papers by eight fairytale and folklorist, plus a preface by Chichester professor and journal editor William Gray. The preface has a lovely introduction to the journal and an explanation as to the many fascinating reasons why the name Gramarye was picked.

I won’t comment on every article in the journal, but I will say something about a few I most enjoyed and think I learnt the most from. Firstly I was absolutely fascinated by Jaqueline Simpson’s article ‘Terry Pratchett; A Vast Consumer of Folklore.  I also very much enjoyed learning about the Undomestic witch in Diane Purkiss’s article ‘The Undomestic Witch: Scottish Witches, fairies and the Old Religions.

To me though, Maria Nikolajeva’s piece entitled ‘My Favourite Story when I was Young’ was particularly interesting. Maria shares with us her experiences of fairy tales from her childhood, and the differences in our cultures. Stating, rather interestingly; ‘In my culture, there was no practice of retelling scary books into nice and cute ones, nor selecting only stories deemed suitable for children…’She then goes on to tell us about her favourite Han’s Christian-Andersen tales, explaining how she was drawn to the ‘dark and enigmatic stories’. This struck a cord with me, as when I was a child, I too preferred the darker more gory tales, like The Girl with Red Shoes, returning to them again and again.

Another article I found particularly intriguing was Karl Bells ‘The Legend of Spring-Healed Jack; Urban Folklore and Victorian Popular Cultures’. In it he charts the rise and fall of  London based folklore trickster Spring-Healed Jack, who terrorised the London streets through mischief and attack, before enacting daring escapes across the rooftops of London.

These are just a few of the fantastic articles in the journal. Of which I could prattle on about for ages. I won’t though, instead I urge you to log on to the University’s web-site (press here) and order your own copy, it’s a bargain at £8.00 which also includes postage to mainland UK.