[.ca] Ants in My Pants (ISBN 061809640X)

From Amazon.co.uk:
Ants in my Pants is an excellent book, beautifully written and illustrated by newcomer Wendy Mould. A storm is brewing between a mother and her child. Jacob doesn't want to go shopping with his mum. It's cold outside and he doesn't want to get dressed. The battle of wills begins, mum being determined to coax Jacob into getting dressed, but there are problems. Jacob's imagination starts to work overtime: he can't get dressed, as there are ants in his pants, a fox in his socks, geese in his fleece, and lots of other animals lurking in his clothes. Good nature and humour prevail, however, and all is resolved. Children everywhere will adore this book, not only for the amusing story but also for the colourful and life-like illustrations (three years and older). --Susan Naylor

Loved it!:
My 4 year old daughter loved this book. She wanted to read it again and again. Great, story with the right amount of repetition and cute pictures. My daughter was able to 'read' it by memory after a few times and I loved seeing her be independant with the book. I am buying one for a gift too.

Godless descent into madness:
Riveting. Mould has set the bar for psychological thrillers at a new level with this mesmerizing work exploring one man's struggles with the spiritual world and ultimately his own sanity. The reader finds the antihero Jacob already three steps too close to the edge. He sits cross-legged on the filthy hardwood floors of his Glasgow studio apartment in only his underwear as he scribbles the sentence "Will the fight for our sanity be the fight for our lives now that we've lost all the reasons that we had?" This idle time is indeed the devil's workshop and our introduction to Jacob is an introduction to a man already in Hell. However, this barely scratches the surface as this descent is only making a brief stop on it's way down. When a phone call from his mother ends abruptly in a disconnect caused by the blizzard roaring through the city, Jacob's troubled outlook begins to focus on his smallness in the physical world. He feels every eye of a spider in a corner of his ceiling burn mortal holes through him as the walls seemingly begin to shrink all around him. Jacob sees ants in his pants. Jacob sees geese in his fleece. Jacob sees a fox in his socks. Jacob sees a cyclops in his hightops. Jacob sees a nun waving a gun. Jacob sees a goat gnawing at his throat. God's natural world has no place for Jacob, and surely this could be his time. Wendy Mould's prose and brilliantly haunting rhyming motif are what make this such an impressive work. There may not be anything that rhymes with orange, but I certainly didn't think that there were words -- let alone the names of animals and biblical characters -- that would so ominously and appropriately rhyme with cumberbund, cerebellum, leg warmers, or taint among others. With it's hefty 1200 plus pages, this is a "Ulysses"-sized journey. Take it. Five stars.