Children’s books: Stephen Romei picks the best of the bunch

If you’re looking for screen-free entertainment for the kids, the latest children’s books have plenty of laughs.

Margaret Wild’s Bogtrotter and Travels of an Extraordinary Hamster by Astrid Desbordes and Pauline Martin.

I don’t know what Aaron Blabey is on, but I want some. In the following wrap of the children’s books the 10-year-old and I most enjoyed between about April and June, the former actor has three contributions. Pig the Fibber (Scholastic, $16.99) is a sequel to his riotous Pig the Pug, which focused on the titular hound’s avarice. This time his mendacity is in the spotlight, and it’s not pretty, especially for his hapless dachshund mate Trevor, who cops the blame for everything, most spectacularly an aftward emission that makes the eyes water just to look at. Thelma the Unicorn (Scholastic, $16.99) has no such indelicacies, but it’s not without unpleasantness. Thelma is a plain mare who dreams of being special — even though her donkey friend Otis says she is perfect as she is — and what could be more special than a unicorn? Thelma gets her wish, sort of, and what ensues explores the downside of celebrity and the fickleness of fame. It’s the sort of thing that could turn you towards a more obscure profession, such as writing for instance.

Career change is at the heart of Blabey’s third book, The Bad Guys (Scholastic, $9.99), a longer work for middle readers that’s the first instalment in a planned series. The bad dudes of the title are led by a wild-eyed, black-suited Mr Wolf (up to you whether to explain to young minds the nod to The Usual Suspects). Wolf’s rap sheet covers the basics: eating grandmothers and so on, but he reckons he’s been misunderstood and is in fact a good guy. What’s more he has some buddies in the same boat: Mr Snake, Mr Piranha and Mr Shark. Despite some hiccups (“How,’’ Mr Wolf asks his friends, “will anyone take us seriously as good guys if all you want to do is eat everyone?”) the four straighten their suits, adjust their sunglasses and set off in search of good deeds to commit. This is a great story, full of humour. I love the drawing of a cat up a tree, looking down at her would-be saviours, bearing about 400 teeth between them.

Another longer book is Apocalypse Bow Wow (Bloomsbury, $14.99), an eccentric and hilarious graphic novel by American author James Proimos. The story opens with strange scenes: clothes burning on the line, cars abandoned, all the signs of end times — but in a certain house two mutts, lean and hungry Brownie and stout, short-tempered Apollo, go about their business as usual, because “they are clueless”. Eventually they realise the people are not coming back and venture into the suddenly mean streets in search of food, and answers. The result is a canine Lord of the Flies that had Syd and me in stitches. We can’t wait for the promised follow-up, Apocalypse Miaow Miaow.

The cat plays second fiddle in Tony Wilson and Laura Wood’s The Cow Tripped Over the Moon (Scholastic, $24.99), a charming take on the nursery rhyme. “Hey diddle diddle,’’ it starts, “You all know the riddle.’’ But what we don’t know is that the bovine space traveller did not clear the moon at her first attempt. This book takes us behind the scenes of her heroic mission: the training, the ground team (Cat, Dog, Dish, Spoon), the heartbreak of the failed launches, the ultimate triumph. There’s gritty realism (The little dog laughed / He laughed ’til he barfed”) and a sense of history. Somewhere a Soviet version is floating in infinity.

Speaking of space, If … A Mind-bending New Way of Looking at Big Ideas and Numbers (New Frontier Publishing, $29.99) is a wonderfully educational book (I learned lots) that is also great fun to read. Written by American author and teacher David J. Smith and illustrated by Canadian Steve Adams, it explains complex ideas by shrinking them to a scale we can comprehend. If the Milky Way were confined to a dinner plate, our solar system would be a speck of dust too small to see; if the 4.5-billion-year history of Earth were compressed into a single year, humans would make their appearance on the last day of December; if the world’s wealth were represented by 100 coins, the poorest 50 per cent of the global population would share one coin; and so on. A busy book full of real-world wonder.

Reality is not so wonderful for young Bill in Anna Walker’s delightful Mr Huff (Viking, $24.99). He wakes up to a dreary-looking day and even though he’s still inside, there seems to be a cloud forming over his head. Things get worse — his dog eats his favourite socks, he spills his breakfast cereal and school looms — and that little cloud grows and grows.

By the time he gets to class the cloud has become Mr Huff, a huge, grey, sighing apparition that follows him around all day. We especially like the drawing of Mr Huff averting his eyes and whistling while Bill takes a leak. “Seriously?” the boy asks. Bill decides he hates Mr Huff, and the creature’s touching response teaches the kid something about himself. Like Mr Huff, The Velveteen Rabbit (New Frontier Publishing, $27.99) threatened to wring tears from our stoic male eyes. This is a new edition of the picture book first published in 1922 by English writer Margery Williams Bianco.

Queensland-based French-Australian illustrator Helene Magisson provides the images this time, and her depiction of the velveteen rabbit, who after a brief time as a child’s favourite is discarded in favour of shinier objects, is heart-tugging. Banished to the toy cupboard, “he was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him’’. His only friend is the skin horse, another tragic figure. The threadbare horse tells the sawdust-filled rabbit that if a child “loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real’’. It’s a magical possibility countenanced with feeling and grace in this beautiful book.

Trace Balla’s Shine (Allen & Unwin, $19.99) is her follow-up to last year’s superb Rivertime. This is a simpler work than that finely detailed, richly illustrated story of a boy’s river trip with his cool uncle, but its simplicity is deceptive. The story of a young horse, Shine, who lives on a “beautiful planet, amongst the golden stars” is a parable of love, loss and grief. Shine meets Glitter, “the loveliest horse he’d ever seen”, and soon there are two sparkles, Shimmer and Sparky. They have a wonderful life together, “but every horse has to go back to its star some day. And one day it was Shine’s turn to go. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t feel like going, but my time has come. I love you all so much,’ he said.’’ Our ­stoicism crumbled at this point and remained in pieces well after the moving final pages.

But enough of the soppy stuff. Margaret Wild’s Bogtrotter (Walker Books, $24.95), illustrated by Judith Rossell, is a rambunctious yarn about a jolly green Bogtrotter who spends his days, well, trotting around his bog. He’s cheerful enough but for reasons he can’t quite explain sometimes feels bored and lonely. One morning he trots past a frog who asks: “Do you ever run outside the bog?” As Bogtrotter discovers, we all need friends like that frog.

Friendship is at the heart of Nikki Slade Robinson’s Muddle & Mo (Starfish Bay, $14.95), a simple story for preschoolers. Muddle is a duck who is a bit disappointed with his friend Mo. He’s a funny colour for a duck, for starters, his beak is too hairy and his poos are too hard (the illustration demonstrating this last complaint is terrific). Turns out Muddle is well named.

Syd and I have been enjoying books in translation this year, and South Australia-based Starfish Bay has brought out several animal-themed stories by Chinese author Bingbo: Two Unhappy Fish, The Moving House, The Cowardly Lion and our favourite so far, The Pear Violin (all $14.99), in which a squirrel proves music does indeed tame savage beasts.

The Pointless Leopard (Faber, $14.99), by French duo Colas Gutman and Delphine Perret, is a funny story about a grumpy city kid forced to go on country walks with his nature-loving parents. On one such ramble, Leonard meets a talking sheep, who asks him what kind of animal he is. Leonard explains he is Leonard, which the sheep thinks is a kind of leopard. The sheep asks what a Leonard is for, a question the boy cannot answer. When a cow joins them and asks about the newcomer, the sheep says: “It’s a sort of pointless leopard.’’ Leonard needs to work out who he is, and fast, as the woods are not inhabited solely by herbivores.

I’ve saved our favourites for last, both longer reads from Kiwi publisher Gecko Press. Travels of an Extraordinary Hamster ($18.99), by French team Astrid Desbordes and Pauline Martin, is a brightly illustrated graphic novel. It follows the adventures of a rather arrogant hamster in short chapters with titles such as “The Snack” and “Writing a Letter”. The oddball supporting cast includes a polar bear, a brown bear (there’s a running joke about him being “just bear”), a mole and a snail. The little stories seem to go nowhere and often are left unresolved, which we love. It’s the sort of book where we read a bit, look at each other, ask “What was that all about?’’, and laugh. That goes double for The Day No One was Angry ($24.99), by Dutch author Toon Tellegen and French illustrator Marc Boutavant. At 80 pages, this is a multi-night read. It’s divided into 12 chapters in which various unusual animals (hyrax, aardvark, earthworm, lobster, for example) experience anger. Here’s a typical exchange: “ ‘I’m very angry,’ said the beetle, one winter’s evening. ‘Well, I’m even angrier,’ said the earthworm.’’ It’s all gorgeously surreal, especially the chapter in which the lobster goes house to house selling colour-coded varieties of anger from his suitcase (purple rage, anyone?), and opens the door to very interesting discussions, which is what great books are all about.