The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales

"This is a book from my childhood. And I find it as funny now as an adult as I did back then. But perhaps for different reasons. One of the things I love about it now is the way it takes the conventions of the picture book – the usual order being a title page, contents page etc – and turns these conventions on their heads. So the chicken turns up on the contents page flapping about and eventually gets squashed by it. The book is almost a character—certainly it is very much the landscape of the story. “This book is all about detail, and the detail is marvellous” The children listening to (or being read) this story are in on the joke, they know that this is not the correct telling of The Gingerbread Man which is the important thing. They know that everything in this book has been turned it’s head and not as it should be. The kids understand this which gives them a slight edge of superiority. Often there is an edge of superiority when it comes to getting a joke."