The Bad Good Manners Book - Hardcover

Babette Cole was one of the world's best loved writers and illustrators of children's picture books. She created more than 150 picture books and her bestselling Doctor Dog has been adapted as a successful children's cartoon TV series. Famous for her wacky sense of humour, most of her work is comedy like The Smelly Book, The Hairy Book, The Slimy Book and The Silly Book. Babette Cole was born on Jersey in the British Channel Islands. She attended the Canterbury College of Art (now the University for the Creative Arts) and received a BA Honours first class with distinction in animation.She worked with Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate creating children's BBC TV programs such as Bagpuss. Her work has been widely televised on BBC's Jackanory, CBeebies and Channel 4.

Etiquette experts seldom dwell on the uproarious consequences of carelessness. Cole (Dr. Dog), on the other hand, considers chaos the spice of life. In a singsongy voice, the author lectures her readers on propriety ("Don't mess around in the kitchen./ Don't dress the dog... or the cat!/ Don't shampoo with a big tube of glue,/ and don't tell your mom that she's fat"). Meanwhile, impishly smiling children snorkel in a flooded bathroom, drop raw eggs on a linoleum floor and, although "it's very rude to peep!," squint through a keyhole at a shaving adult?only to get an eyeful of foam. The mock-stern tone of these do's and don'ts humorously contradicts the freewheeling illustrations, which depict such comic moments as a portly man losing his toupee and a cheerful kid stuffing toilet paper down the commode, a hint of his pink behind showing for maximum hilarity. At the rhyme's crashing finale?in which a boy delivers breakfast-in-bed to his parents... on a skateboard?Cole reminds children and adults that even the best of intentions sometimes result in an unmannerly mess: "I really tried!" the boy tells his understanding mother and father. A connoisseur of the ridiculous, Cole serves up mayhem without endorsing harmful misbehavior. Ages 4-8.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.