[BOOK REVIEW] Tales from the Crib by Henrik Drescher

Title:  Tales from the Crib

Author: Henrik Drescher

Genre: Parenting / Humor


Year Published: 1995


Year Read: 2011

Publisher: Harvest Books

Source:  Purchased

Content Rating:  Ages 18+ (Sexual Imagery and Nudity)

Buy or Add on:  Amazon  //  Goodreads

“Tales from the Crib,” that title does sound like “Tales from the Crypt” does it not? Well, this book has been on my bookshelf for awhile now and now I have finally got the chance to read this book! At first, I thought that author Henrik Drescher’s first adult book was “Turbulence: A Log Book,” but apparently I was wrong when I read this book. “Tales from the Crib” is an adult picture book by Henrik Drescher and it details the dark side of parents taking care of their children. “Tales from the Crib” might be a bit too crude and creepy, but the humorous set up of the dark side of parenting really made this book worth reading!

Alright, before I get into the pros of this book, I will now talk about what this book looks like because it is really does have an effective on how people view this book. The set up of this book is pretty creative if not a little deceiving because the book is shaped as a baby bottle and on the cover; there is a picture of a bunch of babies inside a crib. Sounds like a cute little book, does it not? WRONG! This book is truly one-hundred percent pure adult content! Henrik Drescher has certainly done a brilliant job with both the illustrations and the writing of this book; well, this book is technically not a novel, it is more like a picture book but I guess you could call it a graphic novel. If you ever get your hands on this book, then you can decide whether or not this book is a picture book or a graphic novel. I am going with “picture book” because there are mainly pictures in this book rather than words that complement the pictures and Henrik Drescher is mainly a visual author as most of his books use mainly images rather than words to describe the situations that the characters of his books go through. What I really loved about this book are the various phrases used to describe the dark situations that parents have to deal with when they have children such as “Bachelor hoodwinked” and “Post-Partum Interior.” Henrik Drescher’s illustrations are laugh out loud funny and creative as the illustrations are mostly shown in orange, black and white colors which give the illustrations a crude yet hilarious look. I also loved the way that the images take on the various phrases about child rearing in an extremely literal sense, such as the phrase “Post – Modern Interior” where there is an image of a couple sitting in a nice clean room and on the next page where the phrase is “Post-Partum Interior,” the couple is still sitting, but the room is really messy and is destroyed because there are children in the room wrecking the place apart. I also loved the way that Henrik Drescher draws the children as little mischievous devils which really reinforces the idea that children are a burden in this book, according to the dark side of parenting idea, as they have mischievous grins on their faces and have sharp teeth.

~WARNING! THERE IS A LOT OF ADULT CONTENT IN THIS BOOK! ~

Do not let the baby bottle shaped book fool you! This is clearly a book for ADULTS ONLY and here is why. There are two things in this book that is not a norm for children’s books:

SEX AND NUDITY!

There are sex and nudity abound in this book as there are images of nude parents and even some images of parents having sex and this sort of makes me feel a little uncomfortable which is why I took off half a point from the rating. It is one thing to read about sex and nudity in a romance novel, but it is another thing to actually see images of nudity and sex and the problem with that in this book is that the characters looked a bit creepy and it just made the nudity scenes so creepy to look at.

Overall, adults who want to read books about the dark side of parenting in a humorous light might love this book!