dadsmanship

An oddly dressed stranger comes over when mom isn't home, insisting that mom is a friend who'd want the kids to let him in to play. Two subverbal, possibly violent friends accompany him. Kids learn the important lesson that when you invite freaky strangers in (over the protest of their boring scold of a goldfish) it's fun to engage in hazardous stunts and wreck the house with them, because strangers also magically clean the house up the second before mom comes home. For it is fun to have fun, and the linkage of action and consequence is nothing but fishbowl superstition.

A mother bunny quashes her offspring's every aspiration, teaching him that dreams are for other bunnies, that she will outflank any attempts to build a life of his own, and that he is better off just sitting home in their suffocating burrow, eating. A favorite of Roger Waters' mother.

You've finished all the Proust in the house and junior is still screaming for more meandering non-narrative circularity: it might be time to dust off this volume of fake Jules Feiffer. If babies had book clubs, this unremitting deconstruction of childhood friendship would reliably end them.

An allegorical meditation on sin and redemption reminiscent of the journey of Augustine. Over the course of a week, a young larva gorges himself ever more hedonistically on the fruits of the world. Waking one Sunday to a yearning no pastry or cased meat can satisfy, the larva dedicates himself to a more ascetic path, leading to his transformation and rebirth as a glorious new being.

Two children, Paul and Judy, live in a world where many basic words are exactly one vowel off: pat for pet, mummy for mommy. Almost certainly they would point skyward at an aeroplane passing by, before going inside to listen to Churchill's programme on the wireless. Father is a remote figure seen only during his morning toilette. (The book's comb binding will appeal to fans of quarterly sales reports and technical manuals.)

Little Nutbrown Hare loves Big Nutbrown Hare very much, despite the fact that Big Nutbrown Hare is a braggart and showoff who must always have the last word.

An unnamed juvenile rabbit lives in a house with vermin openly infesting sleeping areas (despite the presence of at least two cats), an unprotected fireplace, food left out in the open after mealtimes, and an unusual number of clocks. He is cared for by an elderly female relative, who says little beyond scolding him for silence.  A bedside telephone never rings. Nobody calls: goodnight, nobody.

Ferdinand, a three-year-old bull living in rural Spain, exhibits symptoms of long-standing depression. He does not participate in gender- or age-appropriate activities, instead spending his time sitting passively beneath a tree. Against all evidence, his mother, who is a cow, believes him to be happy. One day, following a chance violent outburst, he is kidnapped and taken to Madrid to be publicly tortured and massacred for sport. His utter passivity eventually revolts even his kidnappers, and he escapes with his life.