February 2017 Book of the Month |In a nutshell: gentle badgers versus greedy farmers, no contest! | Could badgers take the place of penguins at the top the charts of cuddly, lovable stars of children’s books? Certainly, if Badger Bill is anything to go by. His happy life is horribly interrupted when he is snatched by the thoroughly nasty Maude and Ethel McGloone. They plan to force him into a boxing match with their vicious dogs, and they’ve got equally mean plans for a family of llamas they’re holding hostage too. Fortunately, help is on the way in the shambling form of Uncle Shawn, one of the kindest and best humans in the world. The Dahlesque wickedness of the McGloones forms a wonderful contrast to the gentle benevolence shown by Uncle Shawn and there’s a zany, madcap humour and surreal logic to it all which is delightfully engaging.
It would be fun to compare Ethel and Maude with Aunts Sponge and Spiker in James and the Giant Peach. Children who enjoy the mix of crazy comedy, jeopardy and warmth will also appreciate Philip Ardagh’s stories of The Grunts. ~Andrea Reece
Uncle Shawn and Bill and the Almost Entirely Unplanned Adventure Synopsis
The first book in a hilarious, heartwarming new series for children from Costa Book of the Year Award-winning author A. L. KennedyThe first book in a hilarious new series from Costa Book of the Year-winning author A. L. Kennedy, featuring a polite badger, the world's most depressed llamas, and an eccentric but extremely kind uncle named Shawn.Badger Bill is having a very bad evening - possibly the worst of his whole life. He's been just been kidnapped by the McGloone sisters, two huge, mean women with eyes the colour of bad-flavoured boiled sweets. In just two days time, they're going to dress him in unflattering shorts and make him fight Ripper, Snapper and Cracker, three vicious, unimaginatively named dogs. The only things in the world that are more depressed than Bill are four llamas who are about to be made into pies by the unpleasant McGloone sisters' even less pleasant brother, Farmer McGloone. But it's all right, because Uncle Shawn is here, and he has a plan - or part of one. He's going to rescue Badger Bill and the four llamas with the help of a friendly mole and a few squirrels. As long as his plan works. It involves quite a lot of dancing for a rescue mission - can Uncle Shawn really pull off his plan and save the day?
A.L. Kennedy is the author of three works of non-fiction, and five short story collections including All The Rage. Her seventh novel Serious Sweet will appear this year. She won the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day, has twice been selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Society of Literature. She is also a dramatist and broadcaster and she has a regular blog with The Guardian Online. She lives in London.
