‘Sin creates [ an inclination ] to sin; it engenders vice by repetition of the same acts. This results in perverse inclinations which cloud conscience and corrupt the concrete judgement of good and evil. Thus sin tends to reproduce itself and reinforce itself, but it cannot destroy the moral sense at its root.’
-- Para. 1865, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994.
A wood stork faces adversity in the form of a ramshackle ladder leading to a nest that has seen better days, in a tree that is certainly rotten and laden with uncertain promise. A clearly pregnant child of the Woodstock generation flagellates an elderly bookish butler with the stamens of an Easter lily.
Encompassing as it does, in twenty-six short epistles, all of the seven capital sins, An Illustrated Alphabet for the Illiterate is encyclopaedic in its reach and catholic in its taste. An exposition of the food chains of various ecosystems is interspersed with a fanciful bestiary of toucans and dragons, faeries and a unicorn and even includes a sympathetic depiction of polycystic ovary syndrome sure to strike a chord with the afflicted.