Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book?

We first met Herb in Beware of the Storybook Wolves, and here he is, back again, pencil and scissors to the ready, altering the course of traditional tales. He falls into a dream in which Goldilocks is a screaming horror, the three bears are docile creatures and Hansel and Gretel tell him to get lost when he tries to warn them of the dangers of eating a gingerbread house. But most of his dream involves complications with Cinderella, the queen and king and a prince who is missing because Herb has cut him out of the pages of his book of fairy tales.

Although Child’s mixture of child-like graphics, photos, textiles and varied typefaces, all seemingly artlessly scrambled together, is by now familiar, each page is still a surprise and a delight. She has the gift of physically deconstructing the familiar to make the observer look and think about what is being shown and said. This too is what she does with these very well-known stories, providing disjunctions in the narratives and conveying a sense of what if …

This is definitely a picture book for older readers. Familiarity with the stories is essential, and an appreciation of Herb’s adventures and Child’s manipulations of text and objects also requires a level of sophistication and experience in how books ‘normally’ operate. And lest all this sounds too serious, it is also very, very funny and definitely not to be missed!