Access Today Fungus The Bogeyman Produced By Raymond Briggs In Text

think I last saw this in my school library in aboutor something, I mean, its a complete classic, although I do prefer Ug, Boy Genius of the Stone Age, for its philosophical musings, although the quotations from Southey, Clare, et al in this book do make me smile.
Fancy quoting “I Am” in a book about bogeys, Genius. I had high hopes for this book, having heard good things about Raymond Briggs' books for children.
I actually couldn't bear to read past the sixth page or so, once I realized that it was just a waytoowordy Bizzaro Supermanstyle reversal of everything in polite society.
It didn't take long for the concept to sink in, and when I paged through the rest of the book, it seemed to be just more "Bogeymen love all things wet, smelly, and dirty" ad nauseum.

Making things go bump in the night can be satisfying in its way, and a pint of slime goes down nicely after work.
Fungus has a full, rich life, which Briggs documents in loving detail, His favored brand of aftershave is "Old Mice", he eats flaked corns for breakfast, and he's read both Stinks I Have Made and The Great Unwashed.


But what does it all mean We discover that even bogeymen aren't immune to existential angst.
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Melancholy, erudite, beautiful, funny, Fungus the Bogeyman is a lovingly created work of art, with as much care and thought in the words as in the images.
Almost documentarystyle, the book follows a day in the life of the title character, his work and home life, and along the way introduces the culture and manners of his people, the Bogeys, whose occupation is frightening humans, also known as the surfacedwelling “Dry Cleaners”.
As the day progresses, we learn more about Fungus and his philosophical selfdoubt,

Through the richlydetailed pages, contrasts and parallels are revealed between the gentle, disgusting Bogeys, and humans.
Raymond Briggs at his very best Fungus the Bogeyman is a delightfully, lovely story in all its disgustingly noxious glory.
Its great and horrible fun for adults and kids alike with brilliant illustrations throughout as youd expect.
Fungus is a great creation / interpretation of a traditional monster, previously enshrined in folklore and now reinvented by Briggs brilliantly for the modern age.
This disgraceful book is a blast from the past, My teacher used to hate it when the class was reading nonschool books and he'd see this wellworn tome on my desk.


Come to think of it, my mother wasn't very happy with me reading it either.


Regardless, I enjoyed it immensely, Spoiler alert Fungus the Bogeyman is wonderful, It is a book about books, It is littered with literary references, It is a meditation on life, It is erudite. It is hilarious. It is sublime. Andrew Male, appearing on the Backlisted Podcast, described Fungus the Bogeyman as "the children's version of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy" and this the most apt and accurate description I have ever come across.


The story, such as it is, follows a day in the life of the eponymous Fungus, a hardworking Bogeyman who is going through an existential midlife crisis, questioning both his purpose and the system in which he works.
When it came out the general public were shocked at the scatological humour, which is now standard in children's literature, but it no longer has that impact.
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.


Please go and read this book and then read it again, This is a book to be wallowed in and deserves to be rediscovered by an entirely new generation.


/A strong stomach is occasionally required to accompany a reading of this exploration of a typical day in the life of Fungus the Bogeyman.
Bogeydom is not a place I would particularly like to visit, but I am glad I am aware of it, and that while reading about its goingson my dinner, and sense of humour, remained intact.
Delightful. I debated giving it five, 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.
This is a delightful, eccentric book, the sort of book that genuinely IS allages, a claim often made but rarely merited.
Kids will delight in the grossness, the often groanworthy but always delightful puns, and the wonderfully detailed art.
Adults will like or should like the dry humour ironically, given that dampness is inherent to bogeys, the wry selfconsciousness, the narrative complexitythe book both tells the story of a day in the life of the eponymous character and provides a deliciously witty history of bogeydomand the simultaneously profound and humorous existential befuddlement of

the protagonist.
Questioning the meaning of life becomes more insightful and urgent, in a way, when the life in question is the antithesis of all we supposedly hold dear in our human world the removal allows for a more dispassionate consideration of the existential void at the core of the universe than a realistic treatment would allow, but the humour mitigates the likelihood of despair.
I love Briggs's dense, complex page design and his masterful use of an array of layout and design features.
We have more or less straight comics, but also sections of pages treated as if they were notice boards, with text boxes pinned to them, "censored" text, charts, etc.
etc. Yes, ultimately the joke is onenote 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.
A genuine classic of the picture book genre, My sons adored this book and now my grandson does as well, It was a dark departure from Briggs' delightful Father Christmas and the Christmas classic The Snowman and they loved Fungus, his wife and his kids in their subterranean world of snot, pus, boils, filth and decay.
And the bogeys! How could I forget them Briggs says that he invented Fungus, to show the petty nastiness of life slime and spit and dandruff, all this awful stuff which is slightly funny because it detracts from human dignity and our pretensions.
It was also a reaction to what he termed the prissiness of childrens books of the time.


And it is was a revelation to discover that even the sublimely happy Fungus was not above an attack of existential angst.