Only partly a story about Fungus; most of the book is devoted to describing the culture, food, houses, gardens, furniture, clothing, literature, pasttimes, etc. It also reads in the style of a non-fiction guide with and lots of information about 'Bogeys' and their different lifestyle.

Skip forward [mumble mumble] years -- yes, that many -- and I've just found the very same book hiding in a forgotten, dusty stack at my parent's house.This book is in good condition with some rubbing to the corners and scratches to the laminate on the front and back cover. Well, I tried re-reading this ‘comic book’ again; but very rapidly made up my mind that whatever might have once appealed to me now definitely doesn’t. The Bogeymen that live there revel in every kind of nastiness imaginable - especially their day-job of scaring human beings. I debated giving it five stars, but there are one or two Briggs books I like even better ( The Snowman and When the Wind Blows, if you were wondering, and even if you weren't), so I held off, no doubt being unforgivably parsimonious with my stars. And it is was a revelation to discover that even the sublimely happy Fungus was not above an attack of existential angst .

A strong stomach is occasionally required to accompany a reading of this exploration of a typical day in the life of Fungus the Bogeyman. As a children’s book today, I would not recommend it: there are many references to British culture in the 70s that simply would not be understood; the vocabulary used is quite advanced (at times fantastical) and thus I would not even be sure at what age group this book should be aimed; and as the book is so dated, it feels sexist and racist by today’s standards. The story, such as it is, follows a day in the life of the eponymous Fungus, a hard-working Bogeyman who is going through an existential midlife crisis, questioning both his purpose and the system in which he works. And even considering that many children do seem to massively relish and cherish humour based on bodily functions and liquid excretions, I do have to wonder whether the massive amounts of the latter occurring in Fungus the Bogeyman might well end up being potentially distracting and even too much of a "good thing" (so much so as to even jade and feel dragging for children who usually enjoy this type of humour, these types of jokes).That is what I loved this time around, Fungus did not know why he scares people, why he puts boils on them and why he does this day after day. Tapping windows, tugging blankets, creaking stairs, making babies cry and hanging around graveyards are all in a nights work for the bogeyman. Raymond Briggs at his very best – Fungus the Bogeyman is a delightfully, lovely story in all its disgustingly noxious glory.

This could be interpreted as a comical, jovial way to show children that different people can live very diverse lives which may help them to become more aware of the world around them. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. For example, Bogeymen are shown to enjoy eating and sharing flies in a similar way to human cigarettes; one brand of fly is the "strong French Gallwasp", a pun on the cigarette Gauloises. We have more or less straight comics, but also sections of pages treated as if they were notice boards, with text boxes pinned to them, "censored" text, charts, etc.

He travels through Bogeydom and into our world every night to go about his job of rattling doorknobs, waking babies, and causing boils to erupt on unsuspecting sleepers. I had been wanting to read this for years and finally bought it last year but I was so disappointed in it! As an adult, it's funny, but it feels strange for a kid's book, and I imagine that it would go right over the heads of younger readers. It tells of how Jessica, a human teenager, finds her way into Bogeydom and meets Fungus and his family.

Briggs not only gives the reader a clear indication of what the Bogeyman wears, eats and wash’s himself with but also the bogeyman’s hobbies, habitat and modes of transport.She reassures him and we are shown that bogeyman, disgusting as they are potrayed in this book, still possess the strongest human emotion, love. Yes, ultimately the joke is one-note (everything in bogeydom is more or less the reverse of things in the human world, so bogeymen prefer dirt to cleanliness, cold to warmth, wet to dry, and so on, though there are occasional inconsistencies), but Briggs pulls off so many brilliant variations on it, and paces them out so carefully as he narrates Fungus's typical "day" (read night) of frightening and irritating people, all the while wondering what purpose his job serves, that the joke somehow never gets tired. But that all being said, the constant and continuously recurring anally, body fluid and excretions based humour does tend to feel and become rather overly exaggerated and overused (even to the point of wearing more than a bit thin and thus no longer even being all that humorous to and for me, and mostly like a buzzing mosquito, somewhat annoying and recurringly tedious).