THE REALLY RUDE RHINO (3+)
By Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross
Anderson, £9.99; 32pp

USING ANIMALS TO illustrate moral precepts is one of the oldest tools in children’s literature. The reasons why it continues are obvious.

Most children love animals, being close to their fears, appetites and instincts. They need to learn to modify these to become acceptable to adult society. Animals, therefore, have come to embody certain moral qualities. Noble lions, wise elephants, evil snakes and clever Anansi the Spider-Man are pretty much hard-wired into our collective consciousness, (with some pretty disastrous results for the real species concerned). At one end of the scale we have Aesop’s Fables; at the other, the animal daemons of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, whose forms reflect a child’s feelings and whose final, adult incarnation reflects an essential truth about their human.

Picture books featuring animal heroes and villains are, too, a conveniently non-racist, non-sexist way of telling a story. If Aesop was indeed a black slave, he was a particularly clever one to realise that he could get his ideas across best by dramatising the actions of beasts, not men. Two very different picture books featuring moral (or immoral) animals extend his wisdom on the limits of cunning and selfishness.

Brian Wildsmith is one of those major children’s illustrators who is first and foremost an artist. Alongside Eric Carle, John Burningham, Maurice Sendak and Jan Pienkowski, he produces images that stand alone as art, not just aids to the text. Wildsmith’s handling of colour, which is speckled, spotted, slashed and splashed all over the background in an exuberance of energy, induces the happy trance that kaleidoscopes or stained glass windows do. Meanwhile, in Jungle Party, a hungry python hatches a cunning plan to devour the animals that hide from him. Undulating up a tree, he invites them all for a party, where he promises everyone will be safe. The animals — a lovely mixture of the exotic (mandrill, gnu, parrot) and the quotidian (fox, goat) — then proceed to compete, doing party tricks. A hyena balances on two melons, monkeys do headstands on a leopard and a pelican collects much of the audience in his beak. Then, of course, the python bets that he could swallow even more animals than the pelican, and they are all too excited to hesitate. Down they go, and it’s only thanks to the elephant that they escape with their lives.

The best kind of stories for the very young always involve appetite — the need to eat, and the fear of being eaten. Like The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo, this is an instant childhood classic, both for its innately pleasing variation on an eternal theme and for its utterly gorgeous paintings.

The Really Rude Rhino is at the comic end of the scale, but no less fun for all that. Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross have become a dream team of writer and illustrator; ever since their hysterical Dr. Xargle books, describing life on earth from the point of view of puzzled aliens, their joint productions have been a biannual delight. This one will evoke shrieks of laughter from the title page, in which The Really Rude Rhino blows a raspberry as he is born. More raspberries follow as he is kissed by grandma, meets the King and Queen, his teacher and Father Christmas. He even shows his bum to his horrified friends.

Tony Ross’s chalky drawings have the looseness of line that make them close to cartoons while still being beautifully composed and colourful. As with all Willis/Ross books, readers are completely on the side of the transgressor. But then, on his fifth birthday, The Really Rude Rhino meets someone even ruder than himself — a little girl. Of course, it’s just asking for trouble to give your kids such a subversive story, but they will love it if you do. Who knows, it may even help them behave less like animals themselves.

What's more...

THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR (2+)
by Eric Carle
Puffin, £5.99
A caterpillar eats itself into a butterfly.

THE TALE OF THE FLOPSY BUNNIES (3+)
by Beatrix Potter Frederick
Warne, £5.99
Lettuce is dangerously soporific.

THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE (5+)
by Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake
Puffin, £4.99
Crocodile plots to eat all children. Ideal first reader.

SWITCHERS TRILOGY (10+)
by Kate Thompson
Red Fox, £5.99
Children turn themselves into any animals at will.

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