Starring Anna Von Ogre, and her family of great ugly ogres, this picture book tale switches the values of good and bad, ugly and beautiful around until your head is swimming. I wonder if your parents said: ‘You’d better be careful, or one day your face will stick like that,’ while you were missing pulling a rude face? Because in this book, it becomes true. Anna is stuck with a beautiful face that she has made. However, ogres, (like all good ogres), expect their children to be bad, very bad and very ugly and they don’t like it when they pretend to be kind or cute or pretty. Sadly, this is what happens to Anna. And, her response. Run away. Eventually, she thinks of the perfect, (if slightly gruesome for non-ogres), way of making herself beautiful again, or if you’re not an ogre, incredibly ugly. The message of the story is a play on idioms that ‘beauty is only skin deep’, ‘beauty is on the inside’ and ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ and it teaches these messages to children in an easy to relate and fun way. The illustrations are simple, but incredibly brilliant, pencil drawings with occasional splashes of green. They will delight any young reader aged 5-7.
Jamie Marshall
Pretty Ugly by David Sedaris
Illustrated by Ian Falconer
Toon Books
ISBN 9781662665271
£16.99
Published 2025
