Algernon and Other Cautionary Tales; Matilda, Who told such Dreadful Lies.....; The Bad Child's Book of Beasts

The latest re-issues of Belloc's classic verse, which was originally published around the turn of the century, are very handsomely produced; big, bold print is given plenty of clear white space in which to make its impact, and a trio of illustrious illustrators provide a wealth of dramatically outlandish graphics.

I loaned these books to a group of Year 5 and 6 readers and found it very difficult to retrieve them, as they passed from hand to hand so rapidly. The children enjoyed the unforced rhythms and rhymes of both the bestiary and the cautionary tales, and they were delighted by the vivacity with which the illustrators bring to life (and, as often as not, put to death) the various brats and pests who inhabit these pages. They particularly enjoyed the casual bizarreness and grisly endings of the cautionary verses, though the relish with which these accounts of being flattened, eaten alive, internally strangled, blown up and burnt to death were greeted bodes ill for the efficacy of the books as a source of moral development!