Dirty Beasts is a 1983 collection of Roald Dahl poems about unsuspecting animals. [1] Intended to be a follow-up to Revolting Rhymes , the original Jonathan Cape edition was illustrated by Rosemary Fawcett. In 1984, a revised edition was published with illustrations by Quentin Blake.
The book contains nine poems, telling of the unusual exploits of unsuspecting real animals (save for the Tummy Beast, who is made up). They are as follows:
An audiobook recording was released in the 1980s read alternately by Prunella Scales and Timothy West; Scales narrated "The Pig", "The Scorpion", "The Porcupine", "The Cow" and "The Tummy Beast", while West narrated the rest. In the audio book version, "The Crocodile" was moved so that it would be told after "The Cow", while "The Tummy Beast" was moved to be told before "The Toad and the Snail". Later in 1998 Puffin Audiobooks published a recording featuring Pam Ferris and Geoffrey Palmer, and in 2002 Harper Audio released a recording of Alan Cumming reading both Revolting Rhymes and Dirty Beasts.
Like Revolting Rhymes, an original video animation (OVA) was also released by Abbey Home Entertainment in the 1990s as part of their Tempo Video range, featuring all 9 tales told using Scales and West's audio book recordings against animations in the style of Quentin Blake's illustrations. Re-releases from 1996 (by PolyGram, later Universal) had their narrations re-dubbed by Dawn French and Martin Clunes in the respective stories.
Dirty Beasts is Martin Butler’s musical setting of "The Pig", "The Tummy Beast", and "The Crocodile" for narrator accompanied by wind quintet and piano. [2]
The Wuzzles is an American short-lived animated television series created by Fred Wolf and produced by Disney Television Animation in their first of two productions. The series was broadcast from September 14 to December 7, 1985 on CBS. An idea pitched by Michael Eisner for his new Disney television animation studio, the premise is that the main characters are hybrids of two different animals. The series ran for one season of 13 episodes.
The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which Augustine of Hippo referred to as The Golden Ass, is the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety.
The Enormous Crocodile is a British children's story, written by British author Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. A picture book written for younger readers than Dahl's other works, the story tells of a hungry crocodile who aims to eat human children via using various, not-quite-impenetrable disguises.
Gladys Porter Zoo is a zoological and botanical park located in Brownsville, Texas, United States. The zoo officially opened on September 3, 1971, and currently averages over 424,000 visitors annually. Situated on 31 acres (13 ha), the zoo houses about 400 animal species and over 250 tropical and neo-tropical species and subspecies. It is the first zoo to have successfully bred the endangered Jentink's duiker. It is also the birthplace of Harambe, the gorilla.
Barnyard is a 2006 animated comedy film produced by Nickelodeon Movies and O Entertainment and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film is produced, written, and directed by Steve Oedekerk, the co-creator of Paramount, Nickelodeon Movies, and O Entertainment's Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001) and its television series continuation The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius. The film stars the voices of Kevin James, Courteney Cox, Sam Elliott, Danny Glover, Wanda Sykes, Andie MacDowell, Tino Insana, John DiMaggio and David Koechner. It tells the story of Otis, a carefree cow who learns the value of responsibility when he becomes the leader of his farm home's community after his adoptive father's death from a coyote attack.
"Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19621.
"Hans My Hedgehog" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. The tale was translated as Jack My Hedgehog by Andrew Lang and published in The Green Fairy Book. It is of Aarne-Thompson type 441.
The Roly-Poly Bird is a fictional character in several children's books by Roald Dahl. He appears in The Enormous Crocodile (1978), The Twits (1980), and the poetry collection Dirty Beasts (1983).
"The Pretty Little Calf" is a Chinese fairy tale collected by Wolfram Eberhard in "Folktales of China". It is related to the theme of the calumniated wife and to the tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, in that a woman gives birth to children of wondrous aspect, but jealous relatives conspire to separate them. Similar stories are attested in East Asian literature, specially Mongolian and Korean, wherein the boy is murdered, but is later reborn in the shape of a calf.
Tractor Tom is a British computer-animated children's TV programme, produced by the Contender Entertainment Group and Hibbert Ralph Entertainment. Two series were produced, consisting of 26 eleven-minute episodes each, which was aired between 9 February 2002 and 18 November 2004 respectively. It was the first program produced by home media distributor Contender, who later went on to produce and replace with the preschool show Peppa Pig.
The Caribou Kitchen is a British preschool animated television series, particularly intended for children aged between two and five years old, which aired on the ITV network's CITV block from 5 June 1995 to 3 August 1998, running for 52 episodes over 4 series. The series was created by Andrew Brenner, and was his first television writing role. It mainly aired in a Monday timeslot throughout its run.
Sophie is a series of six children's books written by Dick King-Smith, and illustrated by David Parkins. The six books were written between 1988 and 1995.
Deadly... is a strand of British wildlife documentary programming aimed principally at children and young people, which is broadcast on CBBC on BBC One and Two and on the CBBC Channel. It is presented by Steve Backshall, with Naomi Wilkinson as co-host on Live 'n Deadly, and Barney Harwood as co-host on Natural Born Hunters. The strand began with a single series known as Deadly 60, and has subsequently expanded into a number of spin-offs, re-edits and follow-up versions.
Margaret Mayo, née Margaret Mary Cumming, is a British writer of children's literature and folktales since 1974.
Revolting Rhymes is a 2016 British computer-animated fantasy comedy drama television film written for the screen and directed by Jakob Schuh and Jan Lachauer, based on the 1982 book of the same name written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake.
