The Muddle-Headed Wombat

 

Image credit: Amazon.com

So I am well and truly on a little bit of an Australian children’s classics binge at the moment, having just closed the cover on another sweet and delightfully illustrated collection of tales: Ruth Park’s The Muddle-Headed Wombat.

In this book of four adventures we are introduced to a lonely muddled-headed wombat that makes best friends with a dainty little mouse and a conceited tabby cat. Together they go on many adventures, including going to school, on holiday at the seaside, and enduring a great thunderstorm while stranded in a treehouse. A lot of mistakes, good intentions, and friendly resolutions ensue, making this a very sweet little book with good little lessons for its young audience. 

Originally, Wombat and his friends Mouse and Tabby Cat began their careers on a daily ABC children’s radio show. Indeed the stories, similar to those of the gum nut babies Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, lend themselves to oral storytelling, but transcribed into the written word, the characters and the adventures they go on do not lose any of their integrity or charisma that inspires emotional attachment from the readers. 

Ruth Park writes simply for an audience on the much younger side, however there is still something about these adorable characters and the way they are fleshed out that allows adults to also enjoy their adventures. Wombat’s adorable mispronunciations as well as silliness and sweet sincerity remind us of Winnie the Pooh and I particularly enjoyed the toying with gender pronouns that Park engages when talking about Mouse. Mouse is referred to as ‘it’ all the time aside from once where Park employs the adjective ‘ladylike’. However, Mouse’s sex is never actually revealed and so there’s a really lovely awareness of the fluidity of gender roles at play here, which was surprising in stories that were around during the 1960s.

Image credit: Wikipedia

As the narratives and characters were fleshed out a lot better than Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, I definitely enjoyed this book better. It’s sweet, fun, and emotionally enthralling with good morals in behaviour being at the centre of its tales. 

Author: Ruth Park, 1962, 1964 & 1965

Illustrator: Noela Young

Published: Combined edition published by Angus & Robertson Publisher Australia, 1979

Snugglepot and Cuddlepie

 

Image credit: QBD Books

Well and truly on the mend from my recent ailment, I’ve been making up for lost time concerning the ‘Australian children’s classics’. After finishing Babe –one of the sweetest little tales ever- I went totally bush and plucked and old copy of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie off the shelf. 

The book is made up of three separate tales chronicling three adventures of the gum nut baby foster-brothers Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Beginning with their travelling from home to see a human, the gum nuts make all manner of friends and have all manner of adventures in which they escape from Mrs. Snake’s dungeon, live temporarily at the bottom of the sea, and rid the bush of the wicked Banksia men. 

While this is a very sweet little trilogy of tales unique to the Australian outback, it’s one of those children’s books that definitely works for a single age group. While I enjoyed the anthropomorphism of the flora and fauna that makes my home country so beautiful, the book itself is very much written for a younger audience. So, if you’re reading as an adult, it’s cute but rather simple and not particularly exciting. 

Image credit: www.anbg.gov.au

While there is certainly a lot of drama and sinister events taking place, the prose hand waves away the seriousness of it all by using simple sentences with a nonchalant tone that, for me, doesn’t spark any real attachment to the characters or events. I believe this book would be better read out loud in the classic oral tradition of telling stories. 

Nevertheless it’s cute and it is regarded as an Australia children’s classic, so I am glad that I have read it.

Author: May Gibbs, 1940

Illustrator: May Gibbs

Published: Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1940

The Wolf's Story

A ‘piggy-back’ novel written by Toby Forward and Izhar Cohen, The Wolf’s Story is a defamiliarising children’s picture book that explores the well-known story of Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf’s perspective. About to embark on a course in Children’s Literature at uni, you may find that a fair few children’s and young adult’s are being reviewed for some time. Bear with me guys! 

Once upon a time there was a friendly wolf that helped an old lady with odd jobs around the house. He did the shopping, mended clothes, tended the garden, he did everything for her. But when the old woman’s granddaughter would come to visit, both Grandma and Red would ignore the wolf completely. Red would bring toffees for Grandma and Grandma didn’t have the heart to tell her that they made her false teeth stick together. One day the wolf tried to tell Red the truth, but Red just ignored him and when the wolf came back, Grandma had a fall and knocked herself out. Fearful of being blamed, the wolf pretended to be Grandma until she woke up… we all know what happened next. 

Maybe this is just me talking because I remember growing up reading the books of Roald Dahl, but I found this to be absolutely unbelievable and I would definitely not like my kids to be raised on it. Even the picture books that I remember from my childhood were better: Supermoo by Babette Cole, The Sign of the Seahorse by Graham Base, Pish, Posh, Said Hirronymus Bosch by Nancy Willard, Tiger Tom and the Stolen Sapphires and The Fairy Book by Shirley Barber, Koalas in Beeoria by Victoria Roberts, Enoch the Emu by Gordon Winch, The Leaping Llama Carpet by Marian Waller; not only did these tales have enchanting original stories but they were beautifully illustrated as well! 

As a picture book, The Wolf’s Story struck me as just being downright confusing and conflicting. Children are meant to sympathise with the wolf, like the wolf better, and in a number of pictures it’s hard to because of the way the wolf is depicted. He always wears an unhappy expression on his face, there are a number of still-threatening pictures of the wolf, and basically each picture is just conflicting with what the story is telling us, hence the tale’s unbelievability. 

The narration tries too hard to establish a different voice for the wolf and it comes across as being forced; obviously this book is supposed to be read aloud so that all the appropriate feelings are conveyed through the reading parent’s voice, but still it’s hard to read a book in a way if you don’t believe in it yourself. 

At the end of the day I describe this book as weak. It’s using characters from a classic tale and trying to re-adapt the story, but as it aims itself as such a young readership, it sort of falls down as it does it. Filled with pictures, which are actually rather decent illustrations, just confusing a bit, action, drama, intertextuality and attempted humour, The Wolf’s Story is not a book that I’ll read to my kids. I’m sticking with my classics and Roald Dahl thank you! 

The Enormous Crocodile

Written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake, The Enormous Crocodile is a great story about right and wrong, even when it comes to ferocious wild animals. A nice and light read, it’s a good blend of mild horror and happy endings for the kids. 

Whilst whiling away the time until lunch, the Enormous Crocodile begins to boast about his love of eating children and how he has secret plans and clever tricks in order to catch some for his lunch today. Upon hearing his boasting, the inhabitants of the jungle rally together to stop the crocodile in each of his endeavours from eating the children in town. 

With it’s slightly macabre setting and plot of a enormous crocodile terrorising the town and the jungle, The Enormous Crocodile is actually a really nice story that promotes the power of collectively trying to reach a common goal. Plus, even though we all know that this is not the case in real life, it nicely depicts that there is right and wrong as to what can be eaten and what can’t… even when it comes to crocodiles. 

Filled with funnily named animals, children, tricks, wicked humour, and a happy ending, The Enormous Crocodile is a fun little read that takes away some of the terror of crocs for young children. 

Dirty Beasts

Written by Roald Dahl, Dirty Beasts is a collection of poems accompanied by illustrations from Quentin Blake. Roald Dahl was my absolute favourite author growing up, so a fair few of his wickedly funny tales are to be found in my library. 

Dirty Beasts features a short collection of poems starring a very clever pig, a nasty crocodile, Stingaling the Scorpion, a terrible Lion, a starved giant ant-eater, a prickly porcupine, a flying cow, a magic toad, and a nasty tummy beast. 

Now, while Roald Dahl’s books are filled with nasty and sometimes macabre stories of children suffering punishment or some form of demise, there are morals to the stories he tells. For example, in Dirty Beasts children are advised to look before they sit, lest they have their rumps punished by a porcupine, beware of animals with large and shining teeth, and to generally be good. 

Dahl’s humour is very wicked with a few macabre undertones in his writing, but I personally think that these tales are wonderful to read to children because a) they are in poem form, which decrease the sinisterness a bit, and b) there are morals to the stories. When you think about it, some of the really old fairytales and fables are a whole lot worse! 

An easy read filled with punishments, nasty animals, magic, rhyme, and morals, Dirty Beasts is a wonderful little collection of poems that I found very entertaining as a child and still continue to as an adult.