Poo Bum

It’s all in the title. This is a story that is about the glee of young children in repeating words that they know adults would rather they didn’t say. It’s a simple tale told in fifteen bright illustrations, whose sense of clarity, colour and design are reminiscent of Dick Bruna, although this rabbit is nothing like Miffy. At the beginning of the story all he says when spoken to is “Poo Bum”. He is eaten by a wolf, who is also consequently restricted to this two word response, until a doctor, also a rabbit and incidentally Poo Bum’s father, bravely plucks his child from the wolf’s jaws. Now his son, who reveals himself to be called Simon, speaks in an exaggeratedly polite and precise manner, apparently cured of his scatological urges, until finding a new taboo word on the last page: “Fart!” The story plays with both the conventions of the moral tale and those of language and manners. The work of an American author and illustrator whose work is usually published in France (this book in 2002), it is translated by Linda Burgess and was first published in English in New Zealand. It will please children, both its use of rude words and its sly endorsement of children’s resistance to and manipulation of adults. Adults who are brave enough to share it with their children can take comfort in the similar courage of the rabbit father and Simon’s comic formal eloquence when he is not being provocative. Both children and adults should enjoy the boldness of colour, design and pictorial characterisation.