A little bit of toilet humour (Animals Scare Me Stiff - Babette Cole)

Member Name: juicy_lucy

Product:	Animals Scare Me Stiff - Babette Cole
Date:	16/01/08 (78 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amusing picture book

Disadvantages: None

Animals Scare me stiff

An amusing picture book by a well known author.

~~Story and Illustrations~~

The story focuses on Tom, who is followed by a dog. Tom is scared because he thinks the dog will eat him, and here we have a picture which children find amusing- Tom in a bowl labelled Pedigree Boy, whilst a huge dog bends down to start his lunch!

After the dog, a horse follows Tom, then a bull joins in the procession, then a snake, birds, spiders, and bats. As each animal joins the line of animals, Tom imagines what they can do to him, including believing that the bats will be vampires and will suck his blood, and the spiders would crawl up his nose. All of the pictures are funny, and children notice details such as Tom's eye balls going all over the place when he imagines the spiders crawling all over his nose, whilst when the big line of animals are following Tom, the spiders are bouncing around on threads.

After following him for a while, the animals come up to Tom and sniff him, and because Tom is so frightened, he falls to the ground but doesn't notice the ants. When he has sat on the ants, Tom screams and pulls off his trousers, at which point we have a funny picture of all the animals running away in terror at such a horrible sight. We see even the ants running away, and then we have the reason why....Tom's bottom! Children find this picture hilarious because of the obvious toilet humour!

The pictures are all big and bold and perfectly tell the story as we go along. The animals are given quite human expressions, and Tom really does look scared when he is imagining the horrors of what the animals will do to him.

~~Other bits of information~~

ISBN: 0-09-940497-4

Publisher: Red Fox, 2003

First Published: 2000

Website: www.kidsatrandom.co.uk


~~Other books by the same author~~

The author has written more than 70 books, and many of them are well known. This is just a selection of books written- they tend to be humorous and have quite quirky illustrations.

Princess Smartypants
Mummy Laid an egg
Prince Cinders
Two of everything
The Trouble with granddad
The Trouble with mum
The trouble with dad
The trouble with Gran
The Slimy Book
Supermoo!

~~Verdict~~

I like this book, and have read it many times to children in Key Stage 1 and early Key Stage 2; it really does have quite a wide appeal. Children find the showing of Tom's bottom hilarious, and although the first time they see the book, the bottom has shock value, after that they like the anticipation of the bottom. In fact, I think the whole story hinges on it!

There is very little text, just a statement that another animal is following Tom on the left side of each double page spread, and on the right side, there is a sentence telling us of Tom's fear. The illustrations perfectly match the text, and are humorous, big and bold. When Tom is really scared, then we have text in capitals with the obligatory exclamation mark, so I have used it to talk about how we use punctuation and font for emphasis.

A simple story with a really funny ending, and one which children will really enjoy. If you are looking for a book that has wide appeal, then I would recommend this one.

Thanks for reading.

Daniela x

Summary: An amusing book by a well known author