Hidden villains of children's literature

A while since my first book review.  I have been reading a lot of books since then and have got opinions on all of them, but I feel moved to get online set right an injustice that has been plaguing me these past few months.

At Christmas I was given a book called The Elephant and the Bad Baby.  It's a classic that has been around longer than even Mummy and Daddy (although nowhere near as long as any of the Grandpeople). 

A brief synopsis of the plot, which is really quite simple.  There's an elephant, and there's a bad baby, who is bad from the start (in an original sin kind of way, I imagine).  They go through town with the elephant taking stuff from shops and giving it to the bad baby. There's a lot of rumpeta rumpeta rumpeta as they run away from the various shopkeepers.  Then the elephant tells off the bad baby for never saying please, and they all go round to mum's house for pancakes. The rumpetas are the best bits.

In the last part of the book, the point is repeatedly made to the reader that you really should say please.  It's even italicised like that.  Rubbing the lack of manners in the bad baby's face.  But this is my problem.  The elephant has clearly made a scapegoat of the bad baby, and I think it's stuck due to the bad baby's reputation.  In each scene it is the elephant who takes the bun, pie, etc.  It's not under any coercion, and indeed it's always the elephant whose idea the shoplifting is.  The bad baby is maybe at fault for not spotting the pattern by the time they reach the grocers or the sweet shop, and requesting the elephant to return his ill-gotten gains, but really he's only a baby, so he can't be expected to have such advanced logical skills.

I say we start a campaign to rename the book "The bad elephant and the misunderstood baby".  Power to babies everywhere.  I'll talk to Raymond Briggs about it.