Fungus the Bogeyman

Product Information

In it we visit Fungus’s house (complete with all sorts of slimy, yucky bits that are revealed as you lift flaps and pull levers), before he goes out to do his work frightening humans. It does so in a manner that is always fast paced and the reader is never easy as the turning of each page brings another revolting revelation. However, as much as I do enjoy both the concept and appreciate much of the humour, I actually remain a wee bit disappointed with and by Fungus the Bogeyman.

The Bogeymen that live there revel in every kind of nastiness imaginable - especially their day-job of scaring human beings.Fungus lives an ordinary life, he gets up, gets prepared for work, makes the commute, does his job and wonders what is it all about? A co-production with Pilot Theatre, the show was directed and adapted by Marcus Romer and designed by Ali Allen. English illustrator and children's book author Raymond Briggs is best known in Britain for his 'books without words' told entirely though full color illustrations.

She reassures him and we are shown that bogeyman, disgusting as they are potrayed in this book, still possess the strongest human emotion, love. Briggs' use of language and play on words is masterful, although I did have to look up quaquaversal - "dipping from a centre toward all points of the compass". 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.He is a bogeyman who goes to the surface each night to cause havoc (literally: things that go bump on the night). 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. I love Briggs's dense, complex page design and his masterful use of an array of layout and design features. 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 goings-on my dinner, and sense of humour, remained intact. We learn about Bogey houses, their family structure, what they do for fun, how they live, the essentials of their health and well-being, and more.

This book is in good condition with some rubbing to the corners and scratches to the laminate on the front and back cover. And while the book was certainly quirky and very funny, it was also very different from what I was expecting it to be. The book follows a typical day for Fungus the Bogeyman, starting when he wakes up and ending just before he falls asleep. His graphic novel Ethel and Ernest, which portrayed his parents' 41-year marriage, won Best Illustrated Book in the 1999 British Book Awards.I had been wanting to read this for years and finally bought it last year but I was so disappointed in it! This sort-of-picture-book-sort-of-graphic-novel acts as a travelogue of "Bogeydom", taking the surface-dwelling "dry cleaner" reader into the world of those creatures that go bump in the night. Briggs uses hilarious wordplay and cultural inversions to create encyclopaedic entries about the strange place of Bogeydom, its inhabitants and customs. However, Briggs continued to produce humour for children, in works such as the Unlucky Wally series and The Bear.