Again!

‘It was nearly bedtime,’ begins Again!, surely one of the best-loved and most reassuring openings for any picture book. But readers expecting a gentle story, which will end with everyone cosily tucked up in bed for the night, are in for a rude awakening!

When his demands to have his favourite story book read ‘again and again’ fall on deaf ears – the poor grown-up having fallen fast asleep in exhaustion – Cedric the little dragon gives full vent to his rage in scenes that will be horribly familiar to all parents of toddlers.  Indeed, so enormous is Cedric’s fury, that he burns a hole right through the last page of the book, and the back cover itself!

As Clive Barnes pointed out in his Books for Keeps Authorgraph interview with Emily Gravett, her books are ‘complete acts of creation’, with the end papers and title pages part of the story. Here, they have already given us hints of what Cedric might be capable of: not only is he crunching gingerbread princesses on the end papers, but there’s a sly wink on the second of two title pages that rather gives him away.

We watch Cedric transform too as the story progresses, changing from sweet, smiling little green dragon angel, into the rampaging red monster who causes so much damage, both to the book in our hands and the characters in his story.  As Cedric’s temper rages, the dragon in his storybook, and the trolls and even the words themselves, are tossed and shaken around the pages, landing in a tangle at the bottom; pity the poor princess too – left dangling upside down from the dragon’s tail at one point, her knickers on full show!

Cedric’s temper is scary to watch, but it’s also exhilarating, liberating and ever so funny.  This is another tour de force from Gravett, a book that demands to be read and looked at again and again and again.