Review of the Day: Bad Badger by Maryrose Wood, ill. Giulia Ghigini

Bad Badger
By Maryrose Wood
Illustrated by Giulia Ghigini
Union Square Kids
$18.99
ISBN: 9781454953456
Ages 7-10
On shelves February 25th

On shelves February 25thI’ve been thinking a lot about friendship. Specifically, friendship as it’s depicted in books for kids. By necessity (and the need for a little bit of drama) tales of friendship can be fraught. Frog and Toad were best friends but that didn’t mean Frog didn’t laugh at Toad’s bathing suit once on a while. For our younger readers, picture books and easy books offer hiccups on the road to friendship that can be explained away with one good old-fashioned heartfelt confession/apology. But once kids are ready for a little more complexity, that’s when friendship tales start to get interesting. Think of Stanley Yelnats and Zero or Harriet the Spy and Sport. And when the entire focus of the book IS the friendship, that’s when things have a chance to get even more difficult. Bad Badger by Maryrose Wood is subtitled “A Love Story”, but not in the romantic sense. This is less a tale of eros than agape, if you get my meaning. Love is here, that’s for certain, but also misunderstandings, miscommunications, and the occasional hurt feelings. It’s a simple story that somehow manages to bring up all kinds of complex questions along the way. Best of all, kids will come up with their own answers to those questions. It’s a book that speaks to the very heart of what it means to be a real friend and a true friend, to someone else.

Septimus, were you to ask him, does not consider himself to be a very good badger. He has spots instead of stripes, for one thing. He lives in a lovely cottage by the sea, and not the forest, for another. And his best friend in all the world is a seagull who says nothing besides “Caw” and whom he has named “Gully”. Septimus is not terribly used to friendships, but he treasures his time with Gully. Still, can a badger and a gull actually be friends? And when Gully goes missing, what will Septimus do to find his friend again?

For all that the book is only 185 or so odd pages, Wood somehow manages to pack in a lot. For example, the book has gotten me to wondering about the extent to which loving yourself helps or harms the relationships in your life. Septimus has a complicated relationship to his own badgerness, to put it lightly. Over the years he has even gone so far as to label himself as a “bad badger” since he believes that he fails some rudimentary requirements requisite in being a “good” badger. Septimus’s relationship to his own status as a badger, affects his relationship with Gully, to a certain extent. He makes a fair number of mistakes, offending animals without meaning to. What’s important is how he reacts when people call him out. Septimus models some marvelous behavior when it comes to apologizing well. I don’t know if the book ever gives him sufficient credit for that, but I certainly noticed AND appreciated it every time.

Another big point it often makes is to touch on the ways in which our assumptions about others may be harmful. Now the saving grace in this book is that both Septimus and Gully make assumptions about one another. Trying to gently explain to someone why you don’t enjoy the same things that they do… well, that’s a problem that goes far beyond badgers and gulls, wouldn’t you say? There were definitely times when I felt that too much fell on poor Septimus and that he shouldn’t have had to shoulder quite as many awkward moments as he did, but this being a younger work of fiction, he ends up just fine in the end. And it’s a remarkable book. At the end, you know that Septimus and Gully will probably still have to work on their relationship a little, but the biggest bumps are now behind them.

It would be easy to overlook the art of Giulia Ghigini in all this, and I don’t really want to do that. Ghigini is an Italian artist and I’d not seen her art before. Wherever they found her, she matches Rose’s tone beautifully. The art in this book looks like graphite drawn on canvas. There’s a gentleness to it. It replicates, complements, and even adds to the flavor of the book. It is not, for the record, syrupy or overly sweet, but it is homey. It is comfortable. It is, in fact, everything that Septimus would want in a book himself. I don’t know how Ghigini manages to convey this so perfectly, but you can’t help but applaud the end result.

I can’t quite decide if it is quite unfair, or entirely fair, that Bad Badger may remind folks of another book of similar length, also featuring friendship and badgers, with beautiful illustrations inside. I am referring, of course, to Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake. Indeed, I can imagine Bad Badger nestled quite comfortably beside Skunk and Badger on a bookshelf somewhere. Both of them deal with friendships between creatures that are strikingly different in significant ways. Of course, in Skunk and Badger, Badger initially resists Skunk’s friendship tooth and claw. In Bad Badger, Septimus’s loneliness is palpable. You begin the book completely under the impression that his friendship with Gully is one-sided, and possibly delusional. Making Gully someone who doesn’t talk adds whole layers of difficulty, and Septimus’s one-sided conversations don’t help the situation all. Yet as the story progresses, it becomes clear that maybe there’s more to this friendship than initially meets the eye. Maybe it’s your assumptions that need to be corrected.

Have I made it at all clear that it’s the writing of Maryrose Wood that makes all of this even possible? I keep talking about tone. The tone of the writing. The tone of the art. Tone tone tone. That’s because the English language is limited and I cannot really, properly, convey to you what it is that Wood does so well. This little world in which Septimus lives is so real and lively, but best of all are the characters that inhabit it. Each one has a marvelous personality, from the snarky snail detectives to the bemused forest badgers to the initially hostile gulls. A child reader will feel safe here, but still root for Septimus to find what he’s looking for. Friendship is the kind of thing that humans young and old understand intrinsically. The children old enough to read this book will have started to realize some of the inherent complexities in their own friendships. They may come to relate very closely to Septimus and his struggles, or they might view them curiously and tuck away some of the lessons here for later in life. Or, best of all, they may just enjoy the story. I sure did. Deceptively simple, exceedingly smart, and lovely to eye and ear alike, this is a delightful little book. Some will say, “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore,” but I say, “They never made them like this, and I’m glad they started now.”

On shelves February 25th

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2025, Review 2025, Reviews