‘A highly diverting picture book about an agreeable pet boa constrictor that earns the affection and gratitude of a French village.’ —BL. ‘Children will love it.’ —H.

Notable Children's Books of 1940–1959 (ALA)
1959 Fanfare Honor List (The Horn Book)
A Reading Rainbow Selection
1958 Children's Spring Book Festival Prize (NY Herald Tribune)...

The Three Robbers has been translated into sixteen languages and has sold millions of copies in the 45 years since it was first published. However, it has been unavailable in English for years, depriving English-speaking children around the world of one of the most memorable, entertaining, and beautiful storybooks ever published, in which good triumphs over evil in a delightfully unexpected way.

Tomi Ungerer has been described as 'the direct natural descendent of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen' and, like all the best fairy tales, The Three Robbers is by turns scary, charming, and surprising. The book tells the story of three fierce black-clad robbers who terrorize and plunder the countryside, armed with a blunderbuss, a pepper blower, and a huge red axe. One night, they meet a small girl called Tiffany, who is on her way to live with a wicked aunt. Tiffany is delighted to meet the robbers, and they take her back to their hideout in place of their usual haul of gold and jewels. Tiffany asks what they plan to do with their riches, but the robbers had never thought about spending money before. They soon find themselves embarking on a completely new career: they gather all of the lost, unhappy, and abandoned children that they can find, and then they buy a big castle so they can give all of the children a happy home.

Hailed by the New York Times Book Review as 'one of the most brilliant illustrators at work today,' Tomi Ungerer writes and illustrates unique books that have been the mainstay of children s libraries around the world for almost five decades. This book was first published in 1962, the same year as Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. After the publication of these two groundbreaking titles, both of which are far removed from the cute, safe, nursery world of cuddly toys and fluffy bunnies, storybooks for children would never be the same again. In 1990, Sendak wrote: ''Some adults look at [Ungerer's] work, then rush to drag out the bromide that explains how easy it is to make a picture book: 'Just a handful of sentences and a lot of blazing pictures.' These critics fail to see that a successful picture book is a visual poem.'' In only 300 words and 20 unforgettable pictures, Ungerer creates an entertaining, wry modern morality tale in which good overcomes evil in the end.

Ungerer's little blonde orphan Tiffany is far from helpless -- she is not afraid of the robbers and instead reforms them, converting their evil into goodness. By the end of the story, the robbers are using their ill-gotten gains to create a kinder, better world for other unhappy children who have been neglected by a thoughtless society. At the time of the book's first publication, Tomi Ungerer summed up the moral of the story as, 'Whatever the color of money, it is never too late to make good use of it,' an intriguingly ambivalent statement that serves as a good indication of the playful, unconventional, sometimes provocative and always entertaining nature of this author....

In this gently satiric fable, Ungerer pokes fun at self-important adults who are afraid of anything or anyone unfamiliar, and reminds us that there is indeed no place like home. On its first publication in the US in 1967, at the height of the Space Race, Moon Man won the Book Week prize for books for children aged 4-8, and Maurice Sendak described it in "Book Week" as 'Easily one of the bet picture books in recent years'. Since then, it has been translated into 12 languages. "Moon Man" will be the next classic Ungerer tale to be turned into a full-length feature film, following on from the success of the award-winning "The Three Robbers", which was shown in French and German cinemas in 2007 and is due to be launched on DVD in the English-speaking world in Fall 2008. Bored and lonely in his shimmering home in space, the Moon Man watches the people on Earth dancing and having a good time.Just once, he thinks, he would like to join in the fun. So one night, he holds on to a passing comet and crash lands on Earth. But the unexpected arrival of this mysterious visitor causes statesmen, scientists and generals to panic, and the Moon Man is thrown into jail. Alone in his cell, the Moon Man uses his special powers to slip through the hands of the law: it turns out that in accordance with the lunar phases, the Moon Man waxes and wanes. His left side starts to disappear - the Moon Man is his third quarter - and as the moon grows thinner and thinner, so does the Moon Man.Finally, he is able to squeeze through the bars of his window and escape. Two weeks later, and once again fully formed, he enjoys his new-found freedom on Earth, and dances happily for hours at a party where all the other guests are wearing elaborate costumes and simply think he has dressed up as the Man in the Moon. But the police are on his trail, and a wild chase ensues.Fleeing through a forest, Moon Man finds a remote castle, where he is welcomed by an ancient, long-forgotten scientist named Doktor Bunsen van der Dunkel, who has been working on a space ship for centuries, with the aim of flying to the moon. Now too old and fat to fit into the completed rocket himself, Doktor van der Dunkel asks Moon Man to be the first passenger. Knowing that he would never be able to live on Earth in peace, Moon Man returns home to his planet, happy to stay there forever now that his curiosity has been sated. Back on Earth, Doktor van der Dunkel finally gets the recognition he deserves for his scientific breakthrough....

‘A highly diverting picture book about an agreeable pet boa constrictor that earns the affection and gratitude of a French village.’ —BL. ‘Children will love it.’ —H.

Notable Children's Books of 1940–1959 (ALA)
1959 Fanfare Honor List (The Horn Book)
A Reading Rainbow Selection
1958 Children's Spring Book Festival Prize (NY Herald Tribune)...