The Bad Child's Book of Beasts

The Bad Child's Book of Beasts is an 1896 children's book written by Hilaire Belloc. Illustrated by Basil Temple Blackwood, the superficially naive verses give tongue-in-cheek advice to children. In the book, the animals tend to be sage-like, and the humans dull and self-satisfied. Within the first three months of its publication, The Bad Child's Book of Beasts sold 4,000 copies. Lord Alfred Douglas accused Belloc of plagiarizing his work Tales with a Twist, which, although published two years after The Bad Child's Book of Beasts, was, according to Douglas, written before Belloc's work. Belloc's friend Donald Tovey had composed musical settings of some of the verses by 1899 and played them in public. In 1911 Belloc expressed an interest in seeing them published. However, Tovey never got around to producing a final score, and the settings are now lost. The illustrations have also drawn comparison to the works seen in Dr. Seuss books.The Dodo