With his nasty hair and hands

Harsh Lesson by Ellen Handler Spitz in The New Republic, April 15, 2010, reviewing the history and nature of the spritely controversial perennial favorite of children, Struwwelpeter.

Humorous, whimsical, outrageous, and bursting with wild exaggeration as well as with an undeniable and notorious streak of terror, Struwwelpeter is in truth a delight. It grips child readers and teaches them not only about the baleful consequences of misbehavior, but also about the subtle lesson that art is made up of powerful contradictory feelings and ideas: that art and literature can be both grim and funny, frightening and cheerful, momentous and banal - like myths and legends and fairy tales.

Here is just a snippet of the Struwwelpeter prose.

Just look at him! there he stands,
With his nasty hair and hands.
See! his nails are never cut;
They are grimed as black as soot;
And the sloven, I declare,
Never once has combed his hair;
Anything to me is sweeter
Than to see Shock-headed Peter.