This Way, Little Badger

by Phil McMylor, Cliff Wright (Illustrator)

Genres: Picture Books, Animals

32 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 1996

Reviews

[Lucy Allison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Personally, I felt this story was a little scary considering that it was aimed for younger children. The images are quite dark with shadows, that depict many things young children may be afraid off. This may be a good opportunity for children to explore these issues without being directly involved, however this should be done with caution. One noteworthy aspect of this book is the regular use of personification, for example "The dark can talk to you! It has a lot of voices." This would be useful for children to explore, and they can write their own personification sentences which could ultimately be used to create a poem perhaps.

[Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m not sure how this book ended up on the shelf, but I’ve tactically ‘lost’ it. It’s terrifying! A little badger gets lost and all the woodland animals take turns to warn him, ‘watch out, dark is coming!’ ‘It can see you… it has lots of eyes.’ ‘It can touch you… it has lots of fingers.’ By the end of the book, badger decides he actually likes the dark, but I can’t figure out he comes to this conclusion after the legitimate trauma he’s been through. I found myself hastily trying to modify this book on the fly so I wouldn’t find myself with a four year old who might refuse to sleep alone ever again. I see the moral it was reaching for, but it definitely fell short.

[Imogen McKenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a very lovely and meaningful text covering fears and how they are rational but eventually we can learn to like the things were scared of, for example, in this book the badger is scared of being consumed by the darkness but in the end when he tells his sister about what happened she makes him realize there is nothing to be scared of.
In this book there is a lot of repetition making this a good book for a whole class read as the children can start to join in with it as the book moves along.
Alongside this, the illustrations included are very detailed and cover the whole page.

[Zoe Hickey · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book about a badger who loses his way. The dark is coming and he is afraid that it is going to get him. Along the way, he meets lots of other animals.
I think this book could be used to talk about adaptations within science.
The dark is unknown to badger and he appears afraid of it. With this, you could discuss things which children are afraid of and any misconceptions which they might have picked up.