Hieronymus Betts and his Unusual Pets

Hieronymus takes us along on his flight of fancy to meet his imaginary menagerie: there’s slimy Slurp the slugapotamus, Gobbler the sabre-toothed rhino-toad, Cuddles the porcupython, not to mention Stinker the bog hog. Then there’s Oojamaflip the whatchamacallit; can you imagine anything worse than this conglomeration? Well, Hieronymus knows something, it’s his fiendish little brother; but he’s real and lots more fun too.

A predictably patterned text with splendid wordplay, a strong sense of the ridiculous, and full of verbal and visual incongruities, this one should have young children both cringing and laughing at the ever more revolting and unlikely animals, and even more at the antics of Hieronymus’s snotty-nosed, potty-spilling younger sibling.