The Bog Baby
by Jean Willis

Release Date: 1st May 2008
Publisher: Puffin
ISBN: 978 0 1415 0030 0
RRP: Ł5.99

Secrets and a small blue bog baby...

The Bog Baby is a tale of two sisters who keep secrets. They keep it a secret that they went to do some fishing all on their own and they keep it a secret that they caught a Bog Baby. They are very kind to the Bog Baby, creating a little home for it and feeding it on bits of cake, but when it suddenly gets ill and stops being a bubbly bouncy Bog Baby, the sisters get a bit fraught. Finally, their mum discovers their secret and tells them how to make the Bog Baby better again.

Secrets can be fun, as this book points out, but they can also be harmful. The subtle way in which the truth comes out and is shown to be in the best interests of the children at the centre of the story is good. But there should be more to a children’s book than just subtle remonstrations of morality. Something should actually happen. And in The Bog Baby, nothing really does.

The illustrations are beautiful and the idea of a magic pond where Bog Babies live is cutesy, but in the end I have very little idea what the point of it all is. It is certainly written clearly enough, but for some unknown reason the vocabulary is out of kilter with the target audience... “Dell– what’s a Dell”? is all I can hear. But only from those children who are still interested enough at that point.

Not a bad book, not badly written per se, just a little bland. Like eating dry toast; you gobble it up because you’re hungry but you derive no satisfaction from it whatsoever.

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