Fierce Bad Rabbits
The Tales Behind Children's Picture Books
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Fierce Bad Rabbits
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Narrated by:
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Clare Pollard
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By:
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Clare Pollard
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
What is The Tiger Who Came to Tea really about?
What has Meg and Mog got to do with Polish embroidery?
Why is death in picture books so often represented by being eaten?
Fierce Bad Rabbits takes us on an eye-opening journey in a pea-green boat through the history of picture books. From Edward Lear through to Julia Donaldson, Clare Pollard shines a light on some of our best-loved childhood stories and what they really mean, weaving in tales from her own childhood and her rereadings as a parent. Because the best picture books are far more complex than they seem - and darker too. Monsters can gobble up children and go unnoticed, power is not always used wisely, and the wild things are closer than you think. Sparkling with wit, magic and nostalgia, Fierce Bad Rabbits will make you see even stories you've read a hundred times afresh.
©2019 Clare Pollard (P)2019 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
Pollard gives us interpretations from various theorists, many of them tiresomely political - is poor old Babar really merely an instrument of repugnant propaganda? After detailing extreme Nazi-centric interpretations of Judith Kerr's The Tiger who Came to Tea, Pollard quotes in fairness Kerr's own comment "A tiger can be just a tiger".
I loved the picture book writers' biographical details which illuminate the stories - Eric Carle's childhood WW2 privations fired the Hungry Caterpillar's gorging; the tragedy of Julia Donaldson's severely schizophrenic son makes The Stick Man heart-rending. Pollard's own autobiographical memories of her childhood shaped by stories make this a very personal book. She has unearthed a multitude of writers' details - such as Ruskin at 63 asking his special friend Kate Greenaway to paint him little girls without their frocks. Storybook idylls ate smashed: Allison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit is a model of good little domestic rabbitness, but Uttley herself nagged her husband to suicide (it was said), and she loathed her lovely illustrator Margaret Tempest. You thought Mr Men-land was harmless fun? How all the characters are in fact Mr Men-ed into namelessness is disturbing in Pollard's readings!
Pollard raises a range of questions. Why and how did traumatic , tragedy-clouded childhoods inspire so many of these writers and artists? Are publishers now accepting work merely because they know it will spawn money-spinning franchises and shedloads of worthless merchandise? In an attempt to make boys keener readers, do we have to have 'boy books' where boys can 'relish the excremental' whilst little girls get princesses and unicorns? It's all lively stuff. I loved it.
Clare Pollard is a warm narrator of her own work, as unpretentious as her written work.
Looking at picture books with fresh eyes
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