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My Worst Book Ever
Author
Illustrator
Bruce Ingman
Publication Date
April 17, 2018
Genre / Grade Band
Fiction / 2nd − 3rd
Language
English
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Description
Picture books are such good fun and so is making them-- but who knew there were so many things that could go wrong? This is the story of a picture book doomed from the very start. Allan has a good idea for a book about a crocodile, but every time he sits down to write, he's interrupted. The manuscript gets soaked in coffee, nibbled by snails, and when Bruce gets started on the pictures, he gets overexcited and draws a hippo, not a crocodile, at which point the publishers get overexcited too--they want a dinosaur and experiment with all kinds of different fonts. Allan and Bruce finally think they've straightened things out, when the book goes off to the printer and--you guessed it--the trouble really starts. My Worst Book Ever is a clever and amusing introduction to the process of writing books for children, and they--along with their parents--will be delighted to see how hilariously wrong Allan and Bruce's book turns out.
Publication date
April 17, 2018
Genre
Fiction
ISBN-13
9780500650905
Publisher
Thames & Hudson
BISAC categories
JUV019000 - Juvenile Fiction | Humorous Stories
JUV047000 - Juvenile Fiction | Books & Libraries
JUV047000 - Juvenile Fiction | Books & Libraries
Library of Congress categories
Imagination
Picture books for children
Books and reading
Authorship
Crocodiles
Illustrated children's books
Publishing
Picture books for children
Books and reading
Authorship
Crocodiles
Illustrated children's books
Publishing
Publishers Weekly
Ahlberg and Ingman (Hooray for Bread) continue their comic streak with a memoir of sorts about bookmaking gone wrong. Addressing readers as if they're right there with him, Ahlberg lays out the catastrophe. While his story about a crocodile pleases him ("Billy Brown boating/ Brave little chap/ Crocodile floating/ Crocodile... Snap!") his drawings get smudged and stained; Bruce, his illustrator, lobbies for a hippo instead of a crocodile. Worst of all, Lucy--his printer's four-year-old daughter--rearranges the book's pages to her liking before they are bound. Her handiwork is revealed in a grand and ambitious gatefold, with the book as Ahlberg intended it on the left and Lucy's version on the right. Pages are upside down, a hippo intrudes, and one page is in Chinese. Ahlberg's confiding, self-deprecating tone provides smiles for anyone who has wrestled with the creative process ("I was gripping my pencil so hard I had to go up to the house and have a chocolate biscuit to calm me down"). It's an entertaining sketch of how books get made and sometimes veer off course. Ages 5-up. (Apr.)
Copyright 2018 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.
Allan Ahlberg
Allan Ahlberg's many award-winning and best-selling children's stories include Peek-a-Boo!, Each Peach, Pear, Plum, The Jolly Postman, The Giant Baby, and The Better Brown Stories. Since Janet's sadly premature death in 1994, Allan has continued to work, recently producing his beautiful tribute to her, Janet's Last Book, and continues to create wonderful books for children of all ages. He lives in England.