Angry Arthur

LoveReading4Kids Says

August 2022 Book of the Month

With some of the most beautiful picture book illustrations you’ll ever see, and a text that is sublime in its pace and simplicity, this is a perfect picture book, one to stand alongside Not Now, Bernard and Where the Wild Things Are in the crispness of its understanding of a child’s world.

Arthur wants to stay up late to watch TV. When Mum says no, he gets angry. As other adults in his family calmly tell him ‘That’s enough’, Arthur gets angrier, his rage eventually consuming everything around him, until it becomes a ‘universequake’ and ‘Arthur’s country, and Arthur’s town, his street, his house, his garden and his bedroom, (page turn), were nothing more than bits in space’.

Every child, and indeed, every one of us, has experienced deep, frustrated rage, nowhere has it been more perfectly depicted. There’s a perfect ending too, peace restored in a way that is both a surprise and inevitable. A must for every child’s bookshelf.

Reviewed by Andrea Reece
Andrea Reece has spent almost her entire working life in children’s books, first as publisher, latterly as consultant, project manager and critic.
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