3 out of 4 stars
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Siegfried’s Smelly Socks by Len Foley, although a book for young children, is not for the faint hearted. Siegfried is trying to find out why his book smells so bad, but as we turn the pages, we find that it’s because he and family members have left something utterly revolting on each page. It’s pretty dire and it’s pretty gross, and I have to say that I loved it. Like all good children’s books, it works on two levels. It’s entertaining for the child and also for the adult who is reading it out loud. My dad would have loved it.
I enjoyed the varied colour of the pages, the mixture of the well-drawn cartoons of Siegfried, his dog and his siblings, and the extremely badly drawn cartoons of the adults, which I thought was a nice touch. There are also photographs of many of the items left in the book which are mixed in with the drawings. I particularly liked the page where Siegfried is superimposed over a photograph of a bedroom as he seeks his socks that are under the bed.
My favourite page was the one that had something so unutterably disgusting on it that it had to be hosed down. I also loved the end. Four pages from the punchline, I was looking at the illustrations and thinking “hang on, isn’t that a...” and then I got to the end and laughed out loud when I found that I was right, it was.
The whole book has a lovely chicken and egg quality to it. It’s all about how bad it smells, so what was it about before it smelled bad? I pity any parent who has to explain that one to a particularly perspicacious youngster (get out of that, Einstein).
I have only a few nitpicks with the story, it has an ellipsis with only two dots, and the writing for the blue sock should have been coloured blue to follow the pattern of the other socks (apart from the polka dot and the striped one, which can be forgiven). I’m afraid that as a child, I was a stickler for rules and patterns.
I also found that some of the rhymes were a bit forced, ‘beans’ isn’t a good rhyme for ‘green’, nor is ‘trouble’ for ‘bubbles’ (I was a stickler for rhymes as well). Sometimes I found that the rhyming metre wasn’t quite right which would have resulted in me stumbling over my words, were I reading it out loud. I was brought up on the excellent Dr Seuss and I’m afraid that all children’s poetry I come across is compared against this first-class exemplar.
Altogether, I enjoyed the book and I believe that anybody who finds bodily functions amusing will enjoy it too. I have given this a rating of 3 out of 4 stars because I have yet to grow out of being a stickler for all sorts of things.
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Sigfried’s Smelly Socks!
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