Bad Little Children's Books: KidLit Parodies, Shameless Spoofs, and Offensively Tweaked Covers

by Arthur C. Gackley

Overview

In Bad Little Children’s Books, illustrator Arthur C. Gackley creates hysterical parodies of children’s book covers from more innocent times. Many of these original books focus on life’s lessons, joys, and curiosities. Gackley cleverly takes the books’ classic covers and turns them into unforgettable, edgy, politicaly incorrect parodies that speak to the bad little kid in all of us. With a catalog of children’s book titles like Peeping Tommy Goes Cougar Hunting, Cousin Milky Is Lactose Intolerant, and The Blind Child’s Picture Dictionary, this collection will have readers in stitches. A fun read for parents, grown-ups, and kids-at-heart everywhere, Bad Little Children’s Books leaves no bad joke unmade.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781419722264
Publisher:	ABRAMS
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	6.75(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Born in 1923, Arthur C. Gackley is the creator of many children’s books, none of which were ever actually published. Mysterious and hermetic by nature, he spent his life living and working in a small New England village, but was likely washed out to sea in the winter of 1962—or possibly fell penniless into an abandoned wishing well shaft around 1978. No body was ever found.

Editorial Reviews

"In most cases, the titles themselves are hilarious on their own. In the context of the whole illustrative package, however, the jokes rise to another level: one that may involve laughing to the point of pants-wetting, depending upon the strength of the reader’s pelvic floor muscles."

Bookgasm

"Parody Of ‘Little Golden Books’ From Your Childhood Is Hilariously Twisted"

The Huffington Post

Should young readers be exposed to harsh historical facts? It's clear where Davis stands on that question. In a book aimed at children as young as 10 years old, he wastes no time telling readers that women were "sexual slaves whose children were slaves." Similarly, slaveholders' methods included "beatings, rape and murder." His account of torture onboard slave ships is nothing short of hair-raising. But it's also true. Accordingly, one can't accuse Davis of sensationalizing. As he makes clear in example after example, the facts speak for themselves—sometimes in gruesome fashion. Similarly, Davis never shies away from the grotesque paradox of our nation's most eloquent proponents of liberty denying that precious right to so many of their countrymen. Still, his primary mission is to illuminate the interior lives of the men and women forced into lives of ceaseless labor—he is most interested in the souls of black folk, what W.E.B. Du Bois called "the rich and bitter depth of their experience, the unknown treasures of their inner life."

The New York Times