Animals Scare Me Stiff

by Babette Cole

An ingeniously funny book which addresses the serious issue of irrational fear in children.Like many small children, Tom has a vivid imagination, but it sometimes runs so wild that even the tiniest things terrify him. He imagines all manner of horrors, from being eaten by a dog and squeezed to death by a snake, to spiders crawling up his nose and birds pecking off his ears. But Tom has the scariest secret weapon of all.

Genres: Picture Books, Animals, Childrens

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Babette Cole was a British children's author and illustrator. Born on the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands in 1949, she attended the Canterbury College of Art (now the University for the Creative Arts) and received first-class BA Honors. She worked on such children's programmes as Bagpuss (working with Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin) and Jackanory for BBC television.

As a children's writer, Cole created more than 150 picture books. Her best-seller Doctor Dog has been adapted as a successful children's cartoon series. Much of her work is earthy comedy, having titles like The Smelly Book, The Hairy Book, The Slimy Book and The Silly Book.

She spent her time writing, visiting schools and traveling. After a short illness she died on 15 January 2017, aged 66.

Reviews

[Clouds · Rating 3 out of 5]

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! (cos it's like his rocking horse, which is also called Horsey, yo)

After this I read: H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 2

[Mips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nederlandse titel "O nee, beesten!"

[Robynt · Rating 5 out of 5]

funny boom but the image at the end i shall have in my brain forever

[Ietrio · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a quite amusing book. Not very amusing. Not very nicely drawn. But okay.