Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • Fierce Bad Rabbits

  • The Tales Behind Children's Picture Books
  • By: Clare Pollard
  • Narrated by: Clare Pollard
  • Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (11 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Fierce Bad Rabbits cover art

Fierce Bad Rabbits

By: Clare Pollard
Narrated by: Clare Pollard
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Expletives Deleted cover art
Write It All Down cover art
Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome cover art
The Gifts of Reading cover art
First Words cover art
The Peanuts Papers cover art
Lala cover art
Nothing Sacred cover art
Bookworm cover art
Haywire cover art
Honey for a Child's Heart, Updated and Expanded cover art
Shaking a Leg cover art
Dear Reader cover art
What Writers Read cover art
Bibliomaniac cover art
Terms and Conditions cover art

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

What is The Tiger Who Came to Tea really about? 

What has Meg and Mog got to do with Polish embroidery? 

Why is death in picture books so often represented by being eaten? 

Fierce Bad Rabbits takes us on an eye-opening journey in a pea-green boat through the history of picture books. From Edward Lear through to Julia Donaldson, Clare Pollard shines a light on some of our best-loved childhood stories and what they really mean, weaving in tales from her own childhood and her rereadings as a parent. Because the best picture books are far more complex than they seem - and darker too. Monsters can gobble up children and go unnoticed, power is not always used wisely, and the wild things are closer than you think. Sparkling with wit, magic and nostalgia, Fierce Bad Rabbits will make you see even stories you've read a hundred times afresh.

©2019 Clare Pollard (P)2019 Penguin Audio

What listeners say about Fierce Bad Rabbits

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    8
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Looking at picture books with fresh eyes

This book is a joy. The challenging and entertaining re-readings of a huge number of children's picture books from the nineteenth century on are presented by the poet Clare Pollard with wit, insight and fascinating detail. It's full, original and constantly fresh, even on topics such as Beatrix Potter's fine line between savagery and sentiment which has been explored before, but the details here are new..

Pollard gives us interpretations from various theorists, many of them tiresomely political - is poor old Babar really merely an instrument of repugnant propaganda? After detailing extreme Nazi-centric interpretations of Judith Kerr's The Tiger who Came to Tea, Pollard quotes in fairness Kerr's own comment "A tiger can be just a tiger".

I loved the picture book writers' biographical details which illuminate the stories - Eric Carle's childhood WW2 privations fired the Hungry Caterpillar's gorging; the tragedy of Julia Donaldson's severely schizophrenic son makes The Stick Man heart-rending. Pollard's own autobiographical memories of her childhood shaped by stories make this a very personal book. She has unearthed a multitude of writers' details - such as Ruskin at 63 asking his special friend Kate Greenaway to paint him little girls without their frocks. Storybook idylls ate smashed: Allison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit is a model of good little domestic rabbitness, but Uttley herself nagged her husband to suicide (it was said), and she loathed her lovely illustrator Margaret Tempest. You thought Mr Men-land was harmless fun? How all the characters are in fact Mr Men-ed into namelessness is disturbing in Pollard's readings!

Pollard raises a range of questions. Why and how did traumatic , tragedy-clouded childhoods inspire so many of these writers and artists? Are publishers now accepting work merely because they know it will spawn money-spinning franchises and shedloads of worthless merchandise? In an attempt to make boys keener readers, do we have to have 'boy books' where boys can 'relish the excremental' whilst little girls get princesses and unicorns? It's all lively stuff. I loved it.

Clare Pollard is a warm narrator of her own work, as unpretentious as her written work.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful