Monday 24 September 2018

"Itchy Scritchy Scratchy Pants" by Steve Smallman and Elina Ellis (Little Tiger Press)

Everyone has a favourite pair of pants, be they hipsters, boxers, Y-fronts or frilly knickers...
But no one really wants their underwear to be irritating or annoyingly breezy.

The setup for "Itchy Scritchy Scratchy Pants" by blog faves Steve Smallman and Elina Ellis begins with a crew of hardy vikings. They're a rip-roaring crew who are brave enough to conquer any continent. But all those years of gadding about in longboats setting fire to monasteries and nicking off with the gold have taken a terrible toll on their undercrackers.

So it's time for new undies. The hardy crew finds a knicker-knitter but they're all out of wool, so it's time for one more (slightly freezing cold) quest to find some legendary Yeti wool to knit the hardiest pants out of.

No easy quest when your nether regions are frozen by the harsh winter winds (plus a few Viking-generated gusts into the bargain).

Yipes! Dragons, Yetis, Viking icecubes!
Pretty much most kids of a certain age are going to love the humour in this, and it makes a nice change to see a Viking crew on an epic quest for booty-covers rather than a bunch of pirates.

Ticklesome rhyming storytelling with a great twist at the end (which is where the book's title comes in), awesome artwork from Elina too!

"Itchy Scritchy Scratchy Pants" by Steve Smallman and Elina Ellis is out now, published by Little Tiger Press (kindly supplied for review).