oh, the things you discover when you travel to foreign lands. Being a librarian, i discovered this book. Actually, rob discovered it, as he was transfixed by the sight of a cartoon zebra with a rubber-hose-like penis, peeing all over the cover of this hardcover children's reader. For the uninitiated, readers would cover ages 6-8, roughly.
Anyhow, we found this book in Rome, in a tiny bookshop near the pantheon, and although it is entirely in italian, the gist is fairly easy to get. In translation, the first page says...this zebra is a zebra with a little problem. He pisses all the time. Psssssssssssss.... (the accompanying pictures portray a gleeful zebra urinating happily in a piazza).
First the unfortunate zebra pees in a restaraunt, into his friends duck and pig's soup and dessert, respectively. Next, he pees out the window onto their heads, to their dismay. Repulsively, he pees into his bath, and overflows it, and the apartments below. The lovely pen and ink illustrations of these events invariably show zebra with a beatific smile on his face as he contemplates his spouting nether regions. I especially liked the well drawn and substantial ball sack that the illustrator added. Nothing like anatomical correctness in a reader.
Anyhow, by now you also get the gist. The story progresses to pig and duck banishing zebra for fear he will overflow the whole town; a fire breaks out; only zebra's unending stream of urine can save the day! Zebra returns in triumph and is made the fire chief, and everyone is issued regulation umbrellas.
A happy ending? yes, except for the poor librarian who accidentally orders this title on spec from a publisher, and gets fired due to patron complaints when little johnny tries to pee on his sister's head. My favourite part of all is the tiny illustration on the endpaper of the bakc page, where zebra, wearing his new fire hat, pees out the sun. Good job zebra.
i'm too tired to connect a link, so the isbn for interested parties is 9788880331841. Do see if you can find a cover illustration! Sadly this book will never be release
2 comments:
Well. At least now I know what my nightmares will be tonight, so I can expect them when I am attacked in my dreams by a disembodied giant urinating zebra penis.
Thanks. Thanks a lot, Italy, for causing me to use the phrase "disembodied giant urinating zebra penis" for the first time in my life. Though now, perhaps not the last.
I particularly enjoyed the drawings of the zebra with the perfectly horizontal stripes. Not to mention the wall-to-wall urination. But if I had seen this at age 8 I would probably still be in therapy.
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