Beware of Boys

Hello, we're back from sunny Lanzarote (where the average daytime temperature crept up to 30 degrees, and we seem to have brought some of the sunshine back with us! Hooray!) and one of the first things we did was to troop down to the local library to replenish our stock of books. Already we have a book of the week, demanded more than any of the other 8 books in our stack. Step forward "Beware of Boys" by Tony Blundell.

When a boy takes a shortcut through the deep dark wood and is captured by a wolf, you'd expect the story to end rather stickily with a boy in a large cooking pot. But the boy in question is a rather (too) intelligent little chap, and soon manages to turn the tables on the hungry wolf. Coming up with an ever-increasing complex list of ingredients for delicacies such as boy cake or boy pie, the wolf is soon hoisted by his own petard in rather humorous fashion.

It's easy to see why this book is so popular with Charlotte and why it's become something of a cult classic (spawning a series of similar "beware of" books by the same author / illustrator. Kids love lists. Kids love craziness. Kids love mess and jumble and chaos and disorder and all those things feature heavily in this rib-tickling book.

I have to admit feeling more than a little sorry for the wolf at the end of this book!

Charlotte's best bit: The ingredients for boy pie (bricks?!?!?)

Daddy's favourite bit: The rather hang-dog (wolf) expression on the wolf's face when he forgets the vital ingredients again and again.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars, book of the week!