Like many kids who've encountered our super-special Anniversary "Book of the Week" choice this week, she was instantly drawn to the quirky little chap wearing his unintentional poo-hat on the cover of Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlbruch's brilliant "The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew it was None of his Business"
As Pavilion celebrate the 30th anniversary of this book, I can't quite believe it's been ten years since we fell in love with it, let alone 30 since it first arrived so it was great to revisit the book clad in its new 30th Anniversary cover, and see what a cynical 11 year old thought of it now.
There are so many reasons to love this, the utterly subversive nature of it (and if we've learned one thing over 9 years of book blogging, it's that most kids - even 11 year olds - can't resist a scatologically themed giggly book like this).
On one level it's a classic revenge story, the sort of thing we wish modern children's books had the guts and audacity to deliver more often rather than sickly-sweet missives about friendship and discovering your true self.
The story of Mole innocently waking up one day, emerging from his hole, and ending up wearing a poo on his head - then making it his mission to discover who was responsible via a hilarious journey of discovery amongst the plops, squirts, squits and bumbles of the animal kingdom - is completely timeless. It's also very funny - and we use the word 'funny' here not in the ironic sense of the usual 'funny' books. It's genuinely funny to see this angry mole blustering his way through a series of further poo-related near-misses as he sets out to achieve his goal and bring the miscreant to justice.
It's deservedly become a true classic in every sense of the word, and I've lost count of the number of folk who we recommended this to, and who eagerly sauntered off to pick up a copy.
Looking at it again, both of us were struck by how brilliantly irreverent and fresh it still feels. Sure, it's easy for children's books to rely on poo and bum gags for giggles, but there's more to this, there's a (slightly grim) lesson about what animals poos look like, and if you look at the modern children's book market, there are quite a few non-fiction titles that owe more than a nod to this brilliant fictional story.
The illustrations are so good that you can almost smell them (yeek!), the story bounces along with the most satisfying pay-off you can imagine - and though there were a couple of follow ups, nothing quite matches the brilliance of this.
Check out the pavilion website for a ton of brilliant resources around this fab book
Sum this book up in a sentence: a ploppy-squishy but brilliantly well-formed firm stool of a tale that has become a complete classic, just as good now as it was when it was originally released 30 years ago.
Read our original OG review from 2010 here!