Snaffles

"You can't find happiness until you know sadness and you can't have true laughter until you know the taste of your own tears."

A long, long time ago, I remember reading these books at school - not all of them, of course, but some - particularly the original story of Serendipity, the pink dinosaur. Sadly, none of my peers and later friends in life seem to know of them - so we must have had a very special collection in our library. Anyhow, with their bright and whimsical illustrations and charming moral messages, I have begun collecting them where I can.

The writer is Stephen Cosgrove, and whilst he pens a fine moral story with quirky characters and a strong message, the true charm likes in the whimsical illustrations of Robin James. Sadly, show more Cosgrove is always the one credited and James does not even have her own wikipedia page.

I picked this one up in hardback, and it looks as though it has previously been loved. The colours are saturated, speaking somewhat of days when colour printing was less precise than it is now, but this just makes the barren land of Grimm (somewhere in the southern US?) look all the more stark and barren and captures the desert environment well. The story itself is very simple - the main character Snaffles, is a vulture-like creature who meets a rabbit that shows him how to laugh.

A delightful picturebook for any child aged 3 . show less

The artwork in this book is beautiful and makes up for the somewhat plain story that accompanies it. I just couldn't find much of anything to relate to some of the characters but it is the wisdom that is found in the book that saves it for me.

Due to some of the teachings I would say this is a good book for teaching emotions to an older crowd and not a younger crowd who may not understand the lesson.