Happy worm

by Allan Ahlberg, Colin McNaughton (Illustrator)

Labelled pictures introduce vocabulary and such concepts as cause and effect, opposites, and parts of a whole.

28 pages, Paperback

First published October 12, 1985

About the author

Allan Ahlberg was one of the UK's most acclaimed and successful authors of children's books - including the best-selling Jolly Postman series. Born in Croydon in 1938, he was educated at Sunderland Technical College. Although he dreamed of becoming a writer since the age of twelve, his route to that goal was somewhat circuitous. Other jobs along the way included postman (not an especially jolly one, he recalls), gravedigger, plumber, and teacher.

Ahlberg wrote his first book when he was thirty-seven, after a decade of teaching - a profession that he maintains is "much harder" than being a writer. He says that if he hadn't become a writer, he would have loved to be a soccer player. He was married for many years to fellow children's author Janet Ahlberg, with whom he often worked. Their daughter, Jessica Ahlberg, is also a children's author.

Reviews

[Anjle · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mother picked this up at a public library for my baby brother in 2003 or 2004. I believe this to be the worst children's book ever written, and that it should be read by everyone, as it will make you appreciate other children's books. What I like to call "the act of the disappearing cat" left me uncomfortable, confused, and with a faint desire to gouge my eyes out to remove from my memory the images of the Schrödinger-like cat, elated to slowly dematerialize out of existence. The book has no plot, it has no meaning, it has no reason to exist other than to be a mindfuck for anyone who reads it. That said, I love it, and hope to share it with many, as I feel it is not only a book about happy animals, magical cats, or parties, but hints at deeper issues, like postmodernism, surrealism, and deconstructionism. It's a great way to expand your child's brain into being able to accept and conceptualize thoughts under these movements -- that, or a good way to to give them nightmares and complexes stemming from their newfound issues with the nature of reality.

(For those of you who enjoyed "Happy Worm," see if you can get your hands on a copy of "Ask Me a Question," by Tomi Ungerer!)