Ruby the Rudest Girl; Harold the Hairiest Man; Boris the Brainiest Baby; Polly the Most Poetic Person

The heroes and heroines of these stories are, as the covers point out, 'the one and only' specimens of their kind. Here, respectively, are unparalleled manifestations of rudeness, hairiness, braininess and a passion for poetry-making, conceived in Anholt's texts and Ross's illustrations in a manner designed to appeal to those young readers who enjoy anything in word or deed of which adult authority might disapprove. But it is all rather less subversive than it might at first seem. Harold learns that baldness too has its joys, Polly's rhyming mania becomes something less irritating when her doctor catches it also and Boris's days as infant prodigy are, mercifully, limited to four: only Ruby leaves us as unrepentant when we meet her first and even here we have to consider the import of the final authorial comment - 'OH RUBY! That is definitely NOT polite at all!' On the whole, then, these are moral tales in today's idiom, funny in places (Harold's story is the best), though unlikely to lead to uncontrollable laughter. They might, possibly, lead their young readers to richer and more challenging experiences.