Customer Reviews

Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Verses

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Unlike most of the appreciators of Hilaire Belloc's comic verse for children, I first came to these wonderfully droll verses as an adult (I was brought up on Samuel Hoffenstein and Ogden Nash), but I have grown to love them as if I had known them since my earliest years (hey, that's the start of "Lord Lundy"). In his "Beasts", "Cautionary Tales" and "Peers" verses, Belloc achieves a delightful synthesis of the fearless straight-ahead gaze of childhood (in the tradition of "The Story of Augustus, Who Would Not Eat His Soup") with the style of absolutely dead-pan English humor (e.g. Stephen Potter's "Gamesmanship"). Do not neglect the verses in "Peers" and "More Peers"; "Lord Hippo" and "Lord Lucky" are the equal of "Matilda" and "Jim". Note for Lord Peter fans: Dorothy L. Sayers has Peter Wimsey quote several times from these Belloc poems.

I was very young when I was given my first copy of this book and I have never managed to forget any of the characters or their crimes. I think most of us know of 'Matilda' who "told such dreadful lies, it made one gasp and stretch ones eyes" but I fear that few know what befell 'Rebecca' who slammed doors or 'Jim' who ran away. More importantly our children are wholly unaware of the consequences of misbehaving. This is a wonderful book full of illustrations and verse designed to amuse and caution us all and leaves us with a moral tale of 'Charles', who shows us "what Everybody might become by simply doing right."

My favorite is "Jim, Who Ran Away from his Nurse and Was Eaten by a Lion." I laughed til I cried. Another winner is "Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String and Died in Dreadful Agony." Occasionally I read excerpts aloud to guests--they all laugh hysterically. This book was a gift from the same family friend (with a Harvard PhD in English) who brought Tom Leher's irreverent songs to my attention. Intelligent, clever and great fun! Kids (and adults) like a bit of pretend gore and silliness.

I learnt lots of these poems as a child in school - perhaps I had a teacher with a wicked and somewhat warped sense of humour! And I have never forgotten how wonderful they are. My personal favourite is about poor Jim, who gets into so much trouble, but the others are equally delightful.

These gleefully moral tales are never out of date. Children will be naughty, and a good rhyme has a timelessness of its own. Share them with your own children and be amused together!

This is an excellent book. It is small and pocket-sized so my children can handle it very easily. This book is advertized as being a hardcover when it actually is not. It is still worth it to get it, though.

Outrageous, yet, delivering a straight-forward moral lesson, Belloc's cautionary tales are classic.

This delightfully sick book contains mostly verses of Children dying. His poetry is the work of pure genius and I have often wondered how he comes up these themes. I remember the first time reading this book, I was brought back to my childhood days of Edward Gorey. This is definately a book for the "sick and twisted" kid-in-you to read. The only reason I had to stop reading my copy of his book is because I started to loss some of the pages. I recommend this book to anyone and everyone old enough to be a twisted kid.

Perhaps the small (tiny) size of this book was indicated in the information on Amazon, but I definitely didn't see it.

But the "larger" problem is that the quality of the binding it absolutely terrible, the book falls apart/pages fall out, and it has hardly been used.

I'm a huge Belloc fan and bought this as a gift for a friend who just had a child. It is a classic, something every child should own. My only caution against this edition is that it is very, very small. If you need a travel edition of Belloc, then this is for you. Otherwise I'd recommend a lager version.

So, content gets 5 stars, but this particular edition is a little lacking.

It may seem like a bizarre sort of set of verses to read to children, but my mother grew up with it, and I think my grandfather did, and it didn't give them nightmares! Kids get caught up in the pattern of the words and adults enjoy these catchy verses as something quaint and charming.