Gross, Silly, Smelly, Hairy & Bad Behaviour
Slime from Mars, stiff stinky socks, hair where hair really ought not to be, terrible manners, misbehaving monsters and gloriously silly people. Here, Babette Cole turns everything children are told not to laugh at into a wonderfully funny world of its own.
The silly, slimy, smelly, hairy world
Babette takes four subjects children instinctively understand — silliness, slime, smells and hair — and pushes each one to absurd extremes. Silly walks meet silly food; intergalactic slime lands on Earth; camels, warthogs and socks compete for the strongest pong; and hair appears on everything from gorillas to tiny fleas.
Four small books. Absolutely no dignity.
Each book takes one deliciously silly idea and explores it through Babette's rhymes, visual jokes and expressive characters.
The Slimy Book
Sticky, sludgy, slippy slime — from slimy pockets and limbs to the most gloriously disgusting goo imaginable.
The Silly Book
A parade of absurd people, pets and sights in a world where almost everyone — and everything — is delightfully silly.
The Smelly Book
Cabbage, fishes, cheese and every kind of pong — a rhyming celebration of the stinkiest things in everyday life.
The Hairy Book
Hairy hats, hairy feet, hairy frogs and hairy food — a nonsense-verse celebration of follicles in all the wrong places.
Teaching without ever becoming terribly well behaved
Babette had a particular talent for making lessons irresistible. Instead of preaching about manners, behaviour and social rules, she exaggerated them, broke them, turned them upside down and let the pictures carry half the joke.
Bad Habits
Lucretzia Crum is a little monster with some enormous bad habits. When her behaviour becomes too much, her parents introduce her to some real monsters — and Babette turns consequences into comedy.
The Bad Good Manners Book
A child's guide to good manners, bad manners and no manners at all. Babette's do's and don'ts are accompanied by energetic illustrations that make the temptations almost as entertaining as the lesson.
Lady Lupin's Book of Etiquette
The magnificently well-bred Lady Lupin tries to teach her puppies social graces: which fork to use, never to bark with a mouth full, always to send thank-you notes — and other rules her unruly class may or may not absorb.
The Beastly Birthday Book
How do you have a truly beastly birthday? Invite raging rhinos, heavy metal bands, slippery sharks, singing cows and a gang of robbers — then see what happens.
Created by Babette Cole with paper engineer Ron Van der Meer, this interactive book combines rhyming humour, movable surprises and a three-dimensional grand finale. The engineering becomes part of the joke: each turn of the page brings the party closer to complete, glorious chaos.
Don't Go Out Tonight
In the village of Ow, Witch Throttlegush has measles — and her magic has gone badly wrong. What follows is a deliciously creepy chain of mishaps involving vampires, dragons, highwaymen and all manner of strange creatures.
The story unfolds through large engineered pop-up scenes, turning Babette's detailed illustrations into a miniature theatrical world. It is an early example of how naturally her characters, jokes and visual storytelling could move beyond the flat page.
Babette's lessons were rarely tidy — which was rather the point.
Across slime, smells, monsters, manners and mayhem, the joke always invites children in first. Behind it sits a sharp understanding of behaviour, language, imagination and the pleasure of learning by laughing at the rules.