Neil Curtis’ formula is an artless one. Select Australia's most loved, gentle and harmless, furry and cuddly mammal as the subject, cast it as a male classical ballet dancer but in a female tutu and with well filled Y-front underpants, then introduce groin-kicking, ‘chundering’ and bashing into a few hundred words of an indifferent, sometimes surreal story which briefly, very briefly, tells how Bear Dinkum lived in a scruffy wheatbelt town with his schizophrenic dad who trains Dinkum to dance. This is achieved with the frequent application of a cricket bat and a stockwhip. His first public appearance takes place on the bar counter of the local pub to the scoffing and leering of the riff-raff. From there he progresses through a charity-benefit concert to the Sydney Opera House leaving a brawl-scarred population in his trail and an ‘operahaus’ which collapsed to smouldering ruins as a result of the ballet troupe’s awesome ‘power’.

It is all pretty mirthless, or so it will seem to the many who do not accept the now out of fashion cult of sick humor. For this reason Dinkum Bear will not have a wide appeal. The obvious talent and technical skill of Neil Curtis’ illustrations deserved a stronger, a not so joyless story, for his draughtsmanship is quite superb. His illustrations to this book are incredibly patient tonal exercises of no-short-cuts drawing, built up with seemingly zillions of short pen strokes – even his only occasional black areas are achieved by this method. To this should be added how well the first class production, design and printing do the drawings justice. Given the chance, Neil Curtis and his appropriate graphic style could serve the illustrating of stories for young children extremely well.