Herbert: Five Stories by Ivor Cutler

Herbert: Five Stories Reviews

• 
  Alexis Mraz

  Cutler has a large imagination with this story. Basically, everyday of the week a boy turns into a different animals, and has many different adventures with it. He first starts out a young man who has turned into a chicken, and still has to go to school. He finds a friend that falls in love with, and then he just get ups and leaves to play soccer. He's so good at it that the teams make him take turns playing on each. He can't eat normal but he doesn't seem to mind. Then the next day, which is a Tuesday he turns into an elephant, where he actually turns into a human, and has to have Annie (the love of his life) get him some human clothes. Wednesday, he turned in a kangaroo, where the principle makes him dust out the mats on the floor, and once again Herbert is up in time to be human and get a treat. Thursday he turns into an animal he nor his mother new. She took him to the zoo to figure out what he was, and found out that he was a South American Rodent. Finally, on Friday he turned into a Herbert (he got to stay human), while Annie turn into a anaconda.
  
  This book really makes children think that they can change into different animals, and that nothing has to be the way that you think it is. It has detail illurstations that show what the animals look like, and what they do, by act as if they were one. It's a very real sensation. I think for children they understand, even though it's not the same story and doesn't really have a plot, they can put the characters together in order to create their own story.
• 
  eleight

  Herbert changes into different animals in the stories in this book. There are much better children's books, but this one is notable because it talks about capybaras, and you don't see them in print very often.
• 
  Sheldon

  Not a really good book. In face it's kind of bad. It was thankfully short and has a capybara in it. That's the one star.
• 
  Ben Ballin

  As whimsical and peculiar as one might hope. Somehow, Cutler seems to get inside a child's head in these stories, that I first read to my eldest son many years ago. Lovely!