The Bad Book
Andy Griffiths
Terry Denton
Macmillan 2004
172 pp., pbk $14.95
0330365002
This is a book full of humour and very hard to put down. It is made up of stories and rhymes. The Bad Book changes these stories and rhymes into funny and disgusting ones. This book also has a song or two, (for example: If you'r e bad and you know it)
The characters in this book are the town’s people, and a few from some nursery rhymes. There are also animals (for example an ant).
Meant to make you have a giggle and laugh, the theme of this book is………being bad. I don’t think the author (Andy Griffiths) meant people to go out and do all these bad things, but wrote this book only to give people a few laughs.
I think the reason for this book being banned in some libraries, schools and other places is that this book contains things like: cruelty to everything, people doing silly things, other bad things, bad people, bad places and bad jokes. This book is weird because half the things in this book are impossible (for example, flushing yourself down the toilet for the fun of it).
The illustrations in this book are great and really match the story. They are also very funny. I think the language in this book (although funny), is appropriate for ages eight and older.
This is a book I really enjoyed but if you are disgusted easily, I don’t think that this book is for you. This is a great book, but you must also remember that this is also a bad, bad, bad book.
Hannah 9yrs Highfields State School
We couldn't wait to read this book to see what all the fuss was about - and we still don't know! We just thought it was a really funny book of riddles and rhymes, stories and pictures that made us laugh.
A lot of the rhymes are funny versions of traditional rhymes that we already know - our favourite was Peter, Peter Junk Food Eater. We showed it to our teacher and she said she would use it in a lesson about healthy food.
We think Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton deliberately set out to shock adults with this book and they must have succeeded because of all the publicity it got. All that did was make us want to read it. So we did and we loved it.
Chris and Sam, 10, Canberra
