I recently bought this iPad app for John Stone’s classic Grover vehicle, ‘The Monster at the End of the Book’. It is a hilarious version of what was once a humble Little Golden Book.

Comments from my kids as Grover tied knots, built walls and flung himself against the pages to prevent arriving at the dreaded ‘end of the book':

‘It’s easy! It’s actually easy to turn the pages.’ (Polly, 6)

‘I not afraid. It actually him that afraid.’ (Harry 3)

[Fast breathing] ‘Noooo. Don’t turn page. I not want to turn page!’ (Harry)

‘Oh. I thought it was going to be an actual monster.’ (Polly)

It was a great success, and it made me think of forgotten classic picture books, either from my own childhood, or ones I’ve discovered since I started writing.

The Giant Jam Sandwich, by John Vernon Howell (1972)

This is my favourite ever picture book. A swarm of wasps infests the town of Itching Down and the resourceful townsfolk build a giant jam sandwich in a field in order to catch them.

Then Bap the Baker leapt to his feet
And cried, “What do wasps like best to eat?
Strawberry jam! Now wait a minute!
If we made a giant sandwich we could trap them in it!”

The meter isn’t perfect, in fact it’s much more horrible than I remember, but it is a truly superb, funny, brilliant book. Buy it instead of Cars spin-off merchandise.

Doctor de Soto by William Steig (1982)

The excitable and exceptional dentist Dcotor de Soto has a problem when a fox appears on his doorstep suffering from toothache. Both Doctor de Soto and his wife /assistant, Mrs de Soto, are worried about treating the fox, given the risks of a standing in a fox’s mouth and their general policy of refusing treatment to Dangerous Animals, and yet his professional ethics drive him to help.

This is such a funny book. Quite wordy, but containing the sort of humorous asides that are rare in picture books.

The sequel, ‘Doctor de Soto Goes to Africa’ is good, but falls short being an all time great like this one. Steig also wrote the picture book ‘Shrek‘, although his version is a distant relic from what we see onscreen (I actually prefer the movie).

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, by William Steig (1970)

William Steig also wrote and illustrated the amazing ‘Sylvester and the Magic Pebble’ that won the Caldecott Medal in 1970. In this book, Sylvester’s finds a magic pebble that seems to obey his every command, but then after some very sloppy wish work, Sylvester accidentally turns himself into a rock. He’s a rock for a very long time, and my wife Tamsin doesn’t like this story much because sad parents and traumatised Sylvester are separated across seasons. But (spoiler alert), as the result of some adventurous picnicking, rock, magic pebble, parents and Sylvester all come into contact, and everything turns out okay.

 Are You My Mother, P.D. Eastman, 1960

Eastman also wrote ‘The Best Nest’ and illustrated two classics, ‘Robert the Rose Horse’ and ‘A Fish Out of Water’, but ‘Are You My Mother’ had the biggest impact on me. It’s basically a little horror story for toddlers. Baby bird falls out of nest. Baby bird loses mother. Baby bird wanders around asking everything it sees ‘are you my mother’. The most memorable interaction is with a tractor: ‘No, I’m not your mother, I am a Snort’. It’s great rival in the ‘lost mother’ genre is ‘Owl Babies’ by Martin Waddell.

When I was on ‘Race Around the World’, the first part of my third story in which I searched forlornly for chicken in the town of Chicken, was inspired by Eastman’s idea.

The Great Blueness and Other Predicaments, by Arnold Lobel (1968)

Tamsin put me onto this one, which is her childhood favourite. It’s set in a land with no colours. A wizard, tired of drab grey, mixes some stuff together and finds a substance in the bottom of the cauldron that he calls ‘blue’. For a while, blue is all the rage, until people’s spirits starts to flag. It’s a book about colour, mixing colour and mood association with colour. A nice primary school adjunct to Truman Capote’s ‘mean reds’.

How does this book end up out of print? Arnold Lobel wrote dozens of kids books. His most famous was was the ‘Frog and Toad’ series, which won a Caldecott and became a Broadway musical.

In the Night Kitchen, Maurice Sendak, (1970)

This is hardly a lost classic, as Sendak is such a colossus in kids literature that nothing he did is ‘lost’. Nevertheless, because ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ is so huge, some of the other titles do get passed over, and this one is amazing. ‘I’m in the milk, and the milk’s in me!’ is a cry that my kids love, as well as ‘Milk in the batter, milk in the batter, we bake cake and nothing’s the matter’. The bakers are actually quite spooky in this story – Sendak at one point said that the chefs with their Hitler moustaches and fiery ovens were intended to be suggestive of the Holocaust, and that this was a nightmare kitchen, but all that was lost on me. My kids just enjoy pointing at Mickey’s weiner, laughing when he flies his batter plane, and asking what the hell morning cake is.

Is it as good as ‘Wild Things’? No, not really. ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ is my favourite picture book containing this, my favourite ever page:

Although is that my favourite page? Maybe my favourite page comes from the 1970 Little Golden Book, ‘Woobinda: Animal Doctor’. It’s certainly the only page I’ve ever had turned into a T-shirt:

“Tiggy is bright, excels at most sports, wears modern clothes and likes to keep herself suntanned”.

Which sports doesn’t she excel at? Has Tiggy’s attitude to suntan changed as the dangers of skin cancer have become known?  I found ‘Woobinda’ at my parents beach house, where perhaps Tiggy and her scantily clad ewe hauling should have been let be.

The others, however, are worth tracking down.

Last year, for Book Week, I wrote some more general recommendations from across eras and age groups.

Kids books recommendations by Tony Wilson

If you do decide to enter the Apple iBookstore to buy ‘The Monster at the End of the Book’, hang around for another few seconds and try ‘The Elephant in the Room’ by me and Greg Ure. In a year of heavy elephant fare, (for example Andrew Joyner’s excellent ‘There’s Too Many Elephants in the House’) it’s clearly the one with the best scene involving Mum and Gran in a spa, which, even as a fleeting line read out by a disembodied me in an ebook being fought over on the other side of the room around dinnertime, might be a lovely Moithers’ Day present.

 Here’s the story of how this book came to be published.