[1][2][3] Illustrated by Basil Temple Blackwood, the superficially naive verses give tongue-in-cheek advice to children.

In the book, the animals tend to be sage-like, and the humans dull and self-satisfied.

[4] Within the first three months of its publication, The Bad Child's Book of Beasts sold 4,000 copies.

[5] Lord Alfred Douglas accused Belloc of plagiarizing his work Tales with a Twist, which, although published two years after The Bad Child's Book of Beasts, was, according to Douglas, written before Belloc's work.

[6] Belloc's friend Donald Tovey had composed musical settings of some of the verses by 1899 and played them in public.