Raymond Briggs Books In Order

The Snowman

Now in Pictureback format comes Raymond Briggs’ award winning, enchanting story of a young boy and a snowman who share a magical night of friendship, fun, and flying. ‘The experience is one that neither he nor young readers will ever regret or forget.’ Booklist, starred review. Our new Pictureback format provides simple text written by the author.

The Elephant and the Bad Baby

The Elephant takes the Bad Baby for a ride and they go ‘rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta down the road.’ They help themselves to ice creams, pies, buns, crisps, biscuits, lollipops and apples, and the shopkeepers follow them down the road shouting and waving. All ends well as the Bad Baby learns to say ‘Please’ and his mother makes pancakes for everyone.

Jim and the Beanstalk

Jim woke up early one morning to find a plant that was very like a beanstalk growing outside his window. Climbing to the top of the beanstalk, he found a castle and a giant, but with very modern problems that only Jim could help solve. A Library of Congress Children’s Book of the Year.

Father Christmas

Raymond Briggs, creator of The Snowman, tells a magical Christmasstory that will appeal to everyone who wants to believe in Santa Claus. Meet Father Christmas: a very human gift giver with a tough job to do. You’llfind out that he sometimes gets a little grumpy living at the icy North Poleand squeezing down chimneys, but he more than makes up for it in heart andhumor. Raymond Briggs brings this endearing character to life in over 100wonderfully illustrated vignettes that follow the adventures of FatherChristmas on his big night of the year.’…
one of the most irrestibile yuletide books to appear in manyyears.’ The Horn Book

Father Christmas Goes on Holiday

It’s summer and Father Christmas’s thoughts turn to holiday. No one needs a holiday more than he does but where can such a well known and easily recognizable person go? The author also wrote ‘The Snowman’ and ‘Father Christmas’.

Fungus the Bogeyman

Deep down underground, in the dark, dripping tunnels of bogeydom, live the bogeys, a vile collection of slimy, smelly creatures who revel in everything revolting. Fungus is a bogeyman a particularly foul and fetid specimen. As he goes about his bogey business, the full horrors of bogeydom are revealed. Over 80,000 copies of this fun book have been sold worldwide.

Gentleman Jim

A graphic novel classic from one of the world’s best known cartoonists
Gentleman Jim is the story of Jim Bloggs, an imaginative toilet cleaner who, dissatisfied with his station in life, devotes his time to envisioning a world beyond it. His walls are lined with books like Out in the Silver West, The Boys Book of Pirates, and Executive Opportunities, which provide fodder for his ruminations on career change. Encouraged by his wife, who is also eager to incorporate more adventure into her life, Jim sets out to bring these dreams to fruition by accumulating various accoutrements, only to discover that the life of an executive, an artist, or a cowboy is more complicated and costly than it appears.
Jim s childlike understanding of the world that surrounds him is enhanced by Raymond Briggs s subtle and inventive illustrations. Fantasies are portrayed as organic clouds that move between and overlap outlined panels of his reality, and myopic Jim is drawn smaller and softer than the policemen and bureaucrats interested in impeding his search for adventure. As he begins to infringe more seriously on the law, the city workers and their speech boxes become increasingly angular, much like the rigid rules and regulations restricting his sincere quest. With this playful style, Briggs expertly transforms common feelings of inadequacy into an endearing and enjoyable experience that speaks across generations, concluding with an optimistic implication that even a misfortunate outcome can be better than no change at all.
This classic novel, originally published in 1980, is presented by Drawn & Quarterly in a new edition.

When the Wind Blows

Raymond Briggs’ now famous bestselling comic cartoon book depicts the effects of a nuclear attack on an elderly couple in his usual humorous yet macabre way.

Tin Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman

Fighting over an innocent little island, the ambitious Tin Pot Foreign General and the greedy Old Iron Woman end up killing hundreds of brave men in a meaningless war.

The Man

The Man is a mystery in himself. He turns up at the boy’s house from nowhere and seems intent on causing havoc for the boy. But as the old Chinese proverb says after three days, fish and visitors begin to stink.

Ethel and Ernest

Poignant, funny, and utterly original, Ethel & Ernest is Raymond Briggs’s loving depiction of his parents’ lives from their chance first encounter in the 1920s until their deaths in the 1970s. Ethel and Ernest were solid members of the English working class, part of the generation that lived through the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century. They met during the Depression she working as a maid, he as a milkman and we follow them as they court and marry, make a home, raise their son, and cope with the dark days of World War II. Briggs’s portrayal of how his parents succeeded, or failed, in coming to terms with the events of their rapidly shifting world the advent of radio, television, and telephones; the development of the atomic bomb; the moon landing; the social and political turmoil of the sixties is irresistibly engaging, full of sympathy and affection, yet clear eyed and unsentimental. Briggs’s illustrations are small masterpieces; coupled with the wonderfully candid dialogue, they evoke the exhilaration and sorrow, excitement and bewilderment, of experiencing such enormous changes. As much a social history as a personal account, Ethel & Ernest is a moving tribute to ordinary people living in an extraordinary time. From the Hardcover edition.

The Adventures of Bert

Meet Bert. Say hallo to Bert. Bert is a friendly chap who has many strange and exciting adventures. For instance, one morning as he struggles to put on a shirt, Bert falls down the stairs, out the door, and into the back of a truck, which takes him on an unplanned journey to Scotland. Another time, Bert is chased down the street by a giant sausage. Not to worry! Plucky, enthusiastic Bert always rises to the occasion, in this high spirited collaboration between an internationally acclaimed author and illustrator, who are working together for the first time.

Ivor

One Saturday morning John wakes up to find an invisible something sitting on the end of his bed. The something seems to be gigantic but John can’t work out just how big it is. He tries to measure it, but the invisible giant won’t let him. When John asks this strange new friend its name, the letters IVO appear on his mirror, so John decides to call him Ivor. The invisible giant plays tricks on John’s mum and dad, whizzing the washing line round, spraying the neighbours with a hose pipe and stealing the cherries from the trifle when Auntie Barbara comes to tea. But he can be helpful too: he hoovers the carpets and even does the washing up. When Ivor tells John that he wants to go out with him, John takes him to the park where he gets up to even more mischief. but it is when John takes Ivor to school that the trouble really starts…
‘Ivor the Invisible’ accompanies the film of the same name produced by Screen First for Channel 4. For the first time, Raymond Briggs has written a story especially for the screen and this book uses images based on his original drawings, selected and compiled by Sue Tong.

A Bit More Bert

The bumbling, child friendly hero of The Adventures of Bert returns to transform mundane moments and everyday tasks into ‘adventures’ that are now even more ridiculous. We meet Bert’s mother and learn Bert’s secret regarding her boiled cabbage. We help Bert get a haircut with uneven results. And we cheer Bert on as he searches for his lost dog also named Bert, as are a number of people along the way to whom Bert turns for help. In the end, after a happy reunion between man and dog, there are all sorts of Berts to say good night to. In a starred review, The Horn Book predicted that Bert’s first book ‘will score a direct hit on five year old funnybones.’ In their second collaboration, author and artist have amplified the visual and verbal fun with even more artful, absurd results.

Ug: Boy Genius of the Stone Age

To the dismay of his parents and friends, a prehistoric boy continually thinks of making things softer, warmer, and nicer, rather than being content in a world of stone.

The Puddleman

Raymond Briggs two time winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal for Illustration and author of Ug, winner of the Smarties Silver Prize returns with this tale of a special relationship between a boy and his grandfather.

One day, Tom decides that he will take his grandfather for a walk to see the puddles that are named after members of their family. Tom’s grandfather tries to tell him that they won t be there, because it hasn t rained for ages. When they arrive, there are indeed no puddles. But then, Tom comes across just the person he needs The Puddleman. Magical and utterly in tune with the richness of a child s imagination, The Puddleman is classic Briggs.