My Worst Book Ever

by Allan Ahlberg, Bruce Ingman (Illustrator)

Overview

A book about all the things that can go wrong when you try to write one, by the picture-book dream team that produced The Pencil and Hooray for Bread

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.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780500650905
Publisher:	Thames & Hudson
Publication date:	04/17/2018
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Allan Ahlberg is a best-selling children’s book writer. He has published over 100 books for children, including such award winners as Each Peach Pear Plum, Burglar Bill, Peepo, and The Jolly Postman. He lives in Lewes, England.

Bruce Ingman turned to book illustration after teaching art in several colleges. His first book, When Martha’s Away, won the National Art Library Award and the prestigious Mother Goose Award.

Editorial Reviews

"In this (presumably) made-up account, a promising picture-book project falls afoul of a series of aggravating mishaps… Glimpses of a writer's life, with an engaging bid for sympathy at the travails thereof."— Kirkus Reviews

"This book makes an amusing introduction to the process of writing a book."— Learning

From the Publisher

2018-02-04
In this (presumably) made-up account, a promising picture-book project falls afoul of a series of aggravating mishaps.Sitting in his tiny writing shed, narrator Ahlberg begins a brilliant narrative ("Little ducks dreaming / Afternoon nap / Riverbank steaming / Crocodile… / Snap!"). Alas, this proceeds to be splashed with spilled coffee, put on hold in the heat of composition by a family vacation, eaten by garden snails, and finally delivered to illustrator "Bruce"—who unilaterally decides to draw hippos because there are "too many crocodile books." Then the editor wants to make changes too; an overeager designer must be likewise quelled; and the printer's young daughter decides to "tidy up" the loose pages. The author mournfully offers on one side of a double gatefold his original vision ("Not Roald Dahl, of course, or Julia Donaldson even, but not bad") and on the other, a spread-by-spread layout of the jumbled result, complete with changing typefaces, random sketches, mismatched orientations, sudden shifts to French and then Chinese, and a small chocolate handprint. His mild "Oh dear" at the end of this chain of calamities signals his intent to deliver a mild ribbing rather than vengeful slashing to his collaborators over the years. "Anyway, mustn't grumble," he writes midcourse. "That's how a book gets made, after all. Teamwork." The informal illustrations help to make light of the episode. Ingman's nearly all-white cast inadvertently reinforces current criticisms of the industry.Glimpses of a writer's life, with an engaging bid for sympathy at the travails thereof. (Picture book. 7-9, adult)

Kirkus Reviews