Lazy Jack

For once there's no suggestion of disputing the publisher's blurb - 'Tony Ross is a master of the comic updated folk tale.' This time the updating is not so much in the illustration, which is sort-of eighteenth-century, as in the language. In any version this 'simpleton' tale is funny but the increasingly enraged invective of Jack's desperate mother had the juniors I shared this with rocking with laughter and squealing in delighted anticipation of the next outburst. 'Twit,' she cries; 'Gormless beetle brain, she screeches; 'nitwitted pinhead,' she shouts, as he proceeds calmly through the story following her advice exactly but in quite the wrong situation. The pictures, in which Jack is depicted as a resigned and hopeful tryer who never takes his hands from his pockets if he can help it, are Tony Ross at his deadpan best.