S. A. Wakefield. Bottersnikes and Gumbles (1967)

     S. A. Wakefield. Bottersnikes and Gumbles (1967) Bottersnikes are nasty, scale beasts with sharp teeth, and their ears turn red hot when they are angry (which is most of the time). Red-hot ears are useful for starting fires. They live in garbage dumps and are very, very lazy. This deprives them of the comforts of life, so they are very, very bad tempered. Gumbles are agreeable, soft and furry, and squishy. They giggle a lot, and live in the bush, where they chat, play games, soak up the sun, and do just enough work to feel comfortable. Bottersnikes want Gumbles to work for them, so they put them in jam tins. Gumbles occasionally get away from the Bottersnikes, but as soon as they get the giggles, they are helpless, and the Bottersnikes put them in jam tins again. And so on.
     This is a Puffin book, designed to make eight-year-olds giggle like Gumbles, I suppose. However, the premise promises more than it delivers. The humour is strained and contrived as often as not, and the stories don’t have much point. That’s probably why this book never had a sequel, and its characters never showed up on TV. The author is Australian. Maybe the book’s humour is too Aussie for me. * (2002)