By MICHAEL DUGAN, BRETT COLQUHOUN (Puffin Books; 1981)

Quite possibly the finest children’s book that nobody knows about.  Out of print for decades and nearly impossible to find (take it from one who spent years trying), BILLY THE MOST HORRIBLE BOY IN THE WORLD is a terrifically mean little dispatch from the glory days of Australian kid lit.  To my knowledge it was never published outside Australia, which is a shame, as its themes are pretty universal.

Author Michael Dugan, a poet, relates his story in a succession of short, pointed stanzas.  It’s about Billy, a young boy who at age two becomes determined to be the “most horrible boy in the world.”  He realizes this ambition by committing a variety of anti-social and downright evil acts, such as tampering with a teddy bear he was given “To play with and be friends,” but “He filled it up with gunpowder/Then lit it at both ends.”  A zoo trip organized by Billy’s father, who “hoped for quiet fun,” doesn’t go much better, as “His ideas changed when Billy shot/A lion with his gun.”  Nor is a travelling circus safe from Billy’s horrible-ness, as “He wandered all about/Until no one was looking/Then he let the tigers out.”

This is all played for laughs, although many passages, such as the one describing Billy’s first day at school, in which “His teacher thought him sweet/Within an hour he’d hanged her/From the rafters by her feet,” and another detailing how “Billy set his aunt on fire/And screamed with great delight/“Look how Auntie’s burning Dad/It makes the room so bright,”” obviously read far differently now than they probably did back in ‘81.

For those of you worried that Billy might not get his comeuppance, rest assured that the book is staunchly moral in its outlook, although that morality is strictly of the Old Testament variety.  From the final page (!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!): “A boy like Billy couldn’t last/And in his seventh year/The neighbors hung him from a tree/And no one shed a tear.”

Crucial to the book’s overall effect are the dazzling pen and ink illustrations of Brett Colquhoun (a good selection of which can be found here).  Quite simple in conception yet impressively detailed in execution, Colquhoun’s drawings recall past masters of children’s book art like Edward Gorey and Maurice Sendak, capturing the best elements of both while perfectly complimenting Michael Dugan’s magnificently vile verse.