Age 3-7

The message of this ingenious worrier’s guide to phobias is: “A Fear Faced is a Fear Defeated”. Taking the form of a nibbled notebook, it is a catalogue of fears and their Latin names, from arachnophobia to panophobia, plus the made-up “whereamiophobia, the fear of getting lost”. The narrative is in the pictures, featuring a white mouse and an increasingly chewed pencil, drawn with Gravett’s roughly sketched, accomplished line, and using collage, trompe l’oeil, flaps and a fold-out map of the mouse-shaped Isle of Fright. The anxieties refer to Three Blind Mice and Hickory Dickory Dock, as do spoof facsimile ads, catalogues and newspaper articles, playful with puns and lavatory jokes. Readers are encouraged to write or illustrate their fears in a space at the end of each page, while the inside of the back jacket depicts a cosy bedtime and suggests a tactic to tame terrors – draw a picture of yourself vanquishing the thing that bothers you.

LITTLE MOUSE’S BIG BOOK OF FEARS by Emily Gravett

Macmillan £10.99

Buy the book here (inc p&p)

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