This is my wife’s most beloved children’s book, the one she used to beg her mummy to read her every night when she was just six or seven years old... so you have to understand that if I didn’t give it 5 stars I’d be in a world of hurt and, unlike Blaine in Predator, I do have time to bleed, so 5 stars it is.
Seriously, though, this is a pretty sweet children’s book and the illustrations are adorable. If I didn’t have a gun to my head, I’d probably give it 4 stars.
As a child, this was one of my favourite books (always an animal lover and still am). The fact that I still have the book, despite it's very tatty condition, really says how much I loved it. I read it time and again and, even though I used to think some of the pictures were scary, I still kept going back to it. Inside the front cover, where I practiced writing my name, with one other bit of childish annotation where I tried to rename a story (just added in the word "school" so the title of one story becomes "MR MOLE TAKES SCHOOL CHARGE". I have no idea why I did that, apart from the fact that it was about Mr Mole running the school whilst Ernest Owl was ill. Also, I can't even tell how old I was when I did it!).
Anyway, the book is technically as old as me. I believe I have definitely fared better than the book (well, I think I have), but I will never part with it.