Miriam Elia

"'Shopping is consumerist rape, '" says Mummy, "'but I really like these shoes.'" The latest in the Dung Beetle Learning series, Mummy, John and Susan are taken on a thrilling Christmas adventure. "Come with me," says Father Christmas, "and I will show you the magic of kindness." "And I will undermine your vicious program of indoctrination," Mummy counters. She then proceeds to strip Christmas of all its magic and meaning, for the benefit of John, Susan and mankind in general. This book will joyfully ruin the Yuletide festival period for children and adults alike.

In We Go Out, Mummy takes Susan and John out for an exciting day trip in London as part of their new reeducation program. Looking, thinking and reevaluating the world around them is a crucial part of any child's core development, and John and Susan are no exception. A simple stroll down the local high street is magically illuminated by Mummy's insights into the nature of society, religion, art and the various other forms of hierarchal or patriarchal oppression. In this volume, John and Susan--and their readers following along at home--learn about gender, homelessness, public sculpture, luxury redevelopments and property values, among many other valuable life lessons for today. Impeccably dressed and well behaved, Mummy and her children have been ripped from their comfortable middle-class midcentury environment and deposited into the contemporary world, still speaking in the polite vocabulary that characterized the popular Ladybird series. The caricature is so pitch-perfect that the 2014 limited edition of We Go to the Gallery was threatened with a lawsuit by Penguin UK (owners of the Ladybird imprint), which was withdrawn following a change in UK copyright law allowing for parody and satire.

In We Learn at Home, Miriam Elia's follow-up to last year's hit We Go to the Gallery, Mummy takes John and Susan out of their local school to be reeducated at home--though not before tagging the walls of St. James' Primary with the words "Fascist Scum." In order to introduce their young minds to a new, alternative worldview, Mummy will ground all learning in a feelings-based outlook, free of any actual facts or skills, and reevaluate core subjects such as mathematics, religion, philosophy and art. John and Susan burn the Union Jack, debate and learn to paint their inner children. Key vocabulary for young readers includes terms such as "Marx" and "Buddha." Pocket-sized, printed in bold colors and written in clear, simple English, the Dung Beetle Learning series pays tribute to and skewers the much-loved British Ladybird early learning children's books of the 1960s, with our child protagonists learning about contemporary art and politics rather than helping their parents around the house. In We Go to the Gallery, Susan found that the decay of Western civilization smells like rubbish, John learned that some toys are only for venture capitalists and the siblings discovered that God is dead. What new lessons will Mummy teach?