Animals Scare Me Stiff
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my BEDTIME STORIES list.
I have a little boy and love reading to him, so this reading list will cover the classic (and new) children’s stories we’re enjoying together.
My wife is the oldest of three siblings - each six years apart - so her little brother is twelve years younger than her. He's now a teenager, which means he doesn't want his kiddie-books any more - but because he's not too old they're still in good nick. My mother-in-law (she of the Samurai tea-spoons) dropped off a big box of books for my baby son, Fin a few weeks ago.
Most of them are really too old for Fin (he's currently 16 months) but nobody's told him that, so he loves to pull them off his shelf (he has his own bookshelf at ground level) and wave them at us to read for him. Amongst them there are some great additions - Dr Seuss, Meg & Mog, Q-Pootle, Gruffalo, etc - but also many that I'd never heard of before (such as this).
Fin has recently become fond of Animals Scare Me Stiff - it's running third this week behind the noisy monkey book (you press a button, it makes monkey noises) and Room on the Broom (which I really like reading to him). I'm not quite so enamoured with this one - it's not bad - but I'm a sucker for fun, rhyming read-aloud like Room on the Broom (which this is not) - but Fin really likes the pictures in this one.
It's a story about a little boy who's scared of animals and page by page more and more animals start following him - a dog, a horse, a bull, a snake, birds, spiders, and bats - until eventually our young hero takes... 'drastic action' and scares them all away. Fin likes to point at all the animals on each page - especially the horsey!
After this I read: H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 2