Fungus the Bogeyman

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This could be interpreted as a comical, jovial way to show children that different people can live very diverse lives which may help them to become more aware of the world around them.

I had been wanting to read this for years and finally bought it last year but I was so disappointed in it!

I love Briggs's dense, complex page design and his masterful use of an array of layout and design features.

I debated giving it five stars, but there are one or two Briggs books I like even better ( The Snowman and When the Wind Blows, if you were wondering, and even if you weren't), so I held off, no doubt being unforgivably parsimonious with my stars. A co-production with Pilot Theatre, the show was directed and adapted by Marcus Romer and designed by Ali Allen. And it is was a revelation to discover that even the sublimely happy Fungus was not above an attack of existential angst .Because fact is that I have to use my strongest reading glasses throughout and still be constantly squinting, as especially the font size of the printed, of Biggs' presented text is so cramped and so minuscule in size to make easy and comfortable perusal nigh impossible (I have actually had to reread some sections more than a few times because my eyes accidentally kept missing and skipping entire chunks, this also being a further caveat for parents reading Fungus the Bogeyman with or to their children, and perhaps also a potential issue for recently independent readers attempting to read Fungus the Bogeyman by themselves, as they often read better and easier with larger and bolder print). Instead we are left with this dense and contemplative literary work that doesn't talk down to children but rather treats them as intelligent readers and throws in references to the likes of John Milton, Alfred Tennyson, William Oldys, Thomas Carlyle and John Donne. He spends a good portion of the later part of the book wondering "if this is really worth it" and "why do we do the things we do? Initially published in 1977, Fungus the Bogeyman follows one day in the life of the title character, a working class Bogeyman with the mundane job of scaring human beings. As a children’s book today, I would not recommend it: there are many references to British culture in the 70s that simply would not be understood; the vocabulary used is quite advanced (at times fantastical) and thus I would not even be sure at what age group this book should be aimed; and as the book is so dated, it feels sexist and racist by today’s standards.

Over a period of decades, a number of attempts were made to make a film from the book, which was difficult given its lack of an actual plot. When the Wind Blows (1982) confronted the trusting, optimistic Bloggs couple with the horror of nuclear war, and was praised in the British House of Commons for its timeliness and originality. Briggs' use of language and play on words is masterful, although I did have to look up quaquaversal - "dipping from a centre toward all points of the compass". It is a hugely entertaining read from start to finish, chronicling the life of Fungus and his grotesque environment. A celebrated author and illustrator, Raymond Briggs’ works include the seasonal classics, Father Christmas and The Snowman as well as Fungus the Bogeyman.Fungus is a great creation / interpretation of a traditional monster, previously enshrined in folklore and now reinvented by Briggs brilliantly for the modern age. Of course being a pixie type person myself I firmly believe in the little people that live at the bottom of gardens and in enchanted woods and forests. His graphic novel Ethel and Ernest, which portrayed his parents' 41-year marriage, won Best Illustrated Book in the 1999 British Book Awards. This sort-of-picture-book-sort-of-graphic-novel acts as a travelogue of "Bogeydom", taking the surface-dwelling "dry cleaner" reader into the world of those creatures that go bump in the night.

The Bogeymen that live there revel in every kind of nastiness imaginable - especially their day-job of scaring human beings. Bogeymen like: silence, tasting books, losing or drawing games, wetness, rotten smells and slowness. It does so in a manner that is always fast paced and the reader is never easy as the turning of each page brings another revolting revelation. Yes, ultimately the joke is one-note (everything in bogeydom is more or less the reverse of things in the human world, so bogeymen prefer dirt to cleanliness, cold to warmth, wet to dry, and so on, though there are occasional inconsistencies), but Briggs pulls off so many brilliant variations on it, and paces them out so carefully as he narrates Fungus's typical "day" (read night) of frightening and irritating people, all the while wondering what purpose his job serves, that the joke somehow never gets tired. Written and illustrated by Raymond Briggs, a much loved children's author, perhaps best known for his Christmas classic, The Snowman.

A three-part adaptation, featuring Timothy Spall as the title character, aired on Sky1 in December 2015 [4] and was partly shot at West London Film Studios. And even considering that many children do seem to massively relish and cherish humour based on bodily functions and liquid excretions, I do have to wonder whether the massive amounts of the latter occurring in Fungus the Bogeyman might well end up being potentially distracting and even too much of a "good thing" (so much so as to even jade and feel dragging for children who usually enjoy this type of humour, these types of jokes). Briggs uses hilarious wordplay and cultural inversions to create encyclopaedic entries about the strange place of Bogeydom, its inhabitants and customs. Fungus the Bogeyman by Raymond Briggs is fantastic and intriguing read for children aged between seven and eleven. Making things go bump in the night can be satisfying in its way, and a pint of slime goes down nicely after work.