Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People

by Douglas Coupland, Graham Roumieu

In the grand tradition of Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies, Tim Burton's Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Hillaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children, comes Douglas Coupland and Graham Roumieu's Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People.Ever wonder what would happen if Douglas Coupland's unhinged imagination met Graham Roumieu's insane knack for illustrating the ridiculously weird? The answer is seven deliciously wicked tales featuring seven highly improbable, not only inappropriate, characters, including Donald the Incredibly Hostile Juice Box, Hans the Weird Exchange Student, Brandon the Action Figure with Issues and Kevin the Hobo Minivan with Extremely Low Morals. If you are over the age of consent, seriously weird or just like to laugh, you'll love the unlovable miscreants who unleash their dark and unruly desires on every page of these unsuitable, completely hilarious tales.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Humor, Canada, Young Adult, Graphic Novels, Comedy

131 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 2011

About the author

Douglas Coupland is Canadian, born on a Canadian Air Force base near Baden-Baden, Germany, on December 30, 1961. In 1965 his family moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he continues to live and work. Coupland has studied art and design in Vancouver, Canada, Milan, Italy and Sapporo, Japan. His first novel, Generation X, was published in March of 1991. Since then he has published nine novels and several non-fiction books in 35 languages and most countries on earth. He has written and performed for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, England, and in 2001 resumed his practice as a visual artist, with exhibitions in spaces in North America, Europe and Asia. 2006 marks the premiere of the feature film Everything's Gone Green, his first story written specifically for the screen and not adapted from any previous work. A TV series (13 one-hour episodes) based on his novel, jPod premieres on the CBC in January, 2008.

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Retrieved 07:55, May 15, 2008, from http://www.coupland.com/coupland_bio....

Reviews

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should possibly have been titled Highly Inappropriate Tales for Sensitive Souls based on the reactions I've seen for this wonderfully mean spirited book of short stories from Douglas Coupland.

Laughing out loud, snorting milkshakes out of your nose and dirty snickering on public transport are most likely to be the responses to these stories for those of you who aren't so delicate that you think that a playground bully juice box who lures other juice boxes to their deaths under the wheels of cars is in poor taste, or that a Cindy doll who plots to kill her owner for cutting off her hair isn't a hilarious concept. Coupland pulls no punches as he animates his inanimate objects with the very worst in human behaviour, shining a light on our insides and magnifying it like all good fantasy and science fiction should. His mean spirited wit leads the way and the show no fear attitude stays right the way through to conclusion, he knows his views will be unpopular with those PC types and he just goes right ahead pushing the buttons of the oh so precious amongst us whilst ruining perfectly good milk based beverages for the rest of us.

Special mention should go to Roumieu's art which doesn't seem to get nearly enough attention from those who either love or hate this book, his style works very well for the abrasvie nature of the text and adds a whole extra layer of entertainment to your reading time.

Reread potential: 100%

[George Ilsley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perhaps I need a "Pure Drivel" shelf. Yikes. This book claims to be "pants-peeingly funny" but it failed to elicit even a slight dribble — or chuckle.

These inane stories go nowhere, stories that can only aspire to be highly inappropriate. The best line, however, was "Big dreams are for losers." Of course high expectations lead to disappointment, and anyone who dreams this book might be entertaining will be highly disappointed.

The illustrations at times worked against the text, diminishing the whole, as in the undead substitute teacher story. There is no actual carnage in the text, yet the final illustrations were vile, and completely unfunny.

Cannot in good conscience shelve this as "humour".

[Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laugh out loud funny but only for those with a dark sense of humor.

I laughed out loud of course....five stars!

[Mathew Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

7 incredibly crude and disturbing tales reminiscent of kids fairy tales but with a modern twist.

I'm sure you've made a comment on how violent and frightening classic fairy tales are. Like those curious kids, Hansel and Gretel, finding a nice candy house only to be thrown in an oven. Or, Little red riding hood, who is hoodwinked by a hungry wolf whose head is eventually chopped off. Right, for some reason these were deemed appropriate for children. Well, the stories in this book are along the same lines but deal with minivans, action figures, and juice boxes instead of witches and wolves. And, as with all modern things sensitivity prevails, hence the title 'inappropriate tales for young people'. Now for adults it's an entirely different story.

These seven tales are a hilarious take on the lives of modern kids. I heard an interview with the author and he commented on how kid's lives nowadays are filled with so much stuff - iphones, juice boxes, toys, toys, toys...then his mind started working, in the strange way his mind works, and he came up with the idea of 'what if these things came alive and turned evil?" Well, this is what would happen.

There is tale of a juice box who's aim in life it to destroy other juice boxes. He punctures their frail tinfoil holes with things. He tricks them into being run over by cars, exploding their insides onto the parking lot. His destructive impulses increase and he takes off into the streets, burning fast food containers on the way.

There is a tale of a terrible babysitter who makes kids shoplift, burn houses down, and walk through cemeteries late at night.

Another extremely violent tale was about a disturbed action figure. He seemed to suffer from PTSD and is living on the streets. A boy stumbles upon him on day and takes him home. The action figure feels trapped in this situation and needs to break out, and take revenge on his kidnapper. The violence brought down on this boy from a tiny plastic action figure is frightening...and slightly disturbing that someone would think about it!

My favourite was 'Kevin, the hobo minivan with extremely low morals'. It hit close to home. We have a minivan, and I cannot imagine it being a low life character who shakes down children and seniors for loose change to feed its addictions.

Overall, the stories were very imaginative and funny. A nice satire of children's fairy tales with modern gadgets and slang thrown in. I did laugh to myself countless times while reading as well as think 'wtf', by the strange twists or outright disturbing violence. It is definitely not a book to read to children right before bed. Perhaps if they are sixteen and the power is out and nobody wants to play monopoly, it would work then.

http://bookwormsfeastofbooks.blogspot...

[Carolyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't laugh, and they weren't clever. They were just children's stories with death added in to make them "inappropriate." I only really liked (and only mildly) the one about the exchange student, but I found some of the racist remarks troubling (I know that it was supposed to be a "commentary" on people's inaccurate stereotypes on people from Germany, but the ending only seemed to confirm those stereotypes, hence I was troubled).

Children's-books-for-adults is a genre I'm quite interested in, but this was very disappointing from an author I've enjoyed in the past. It just seemed sloppy and contrived, and I can't imagine the entirety of the thing could have taken more than a day to write. And if it did, I wish Coupland's efforts had been spent elsewhere. Some of the illustrations were quite fun though, and I loved some of the details, like the popular girls wearing Ugg boots, or the juice box smoking out of his straw.

[Victoria · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not funny I didn't laugh. Your joke is so bad I would have preferred the joke went over my head and you gave up re-telling me the joke. To be honest this is a horrid attempt at trying to get a laugh out of me. Not a chuckle, not a hehe, not even a subtle burst of air out of my esophagus. Science says before you laugh your brain preps your face muscles but I didn't even feel the slightest twitch. 0/10 this joke is so bad I cannot believe anyone legally allowed you to be creative at all. The amount of brain power you must have put into that joke has the potential to power every house on Earth. Get a personality and learn how to make jokes, read a book. I'm not saying this to be funny I genuinely mean it on how this is just bottom barrel embarrassment at comedy. You've single handedly killed humor and every comedic act on the planet. I'm so disappointed that society has failed as a whole in being able to teach you how to be funny. Honestly if I put in all my power and time to try and make your joke funny it would require Einstein himself to build a device to strap me into so I can be connected to the energy of a billion stars to do it, and even then all that joke would get from people is a subtle scuff. You're lucky I still have the slightest of empathy for you after telling that joke otherwise I would have committed every war crime in the book just to prevent you from attempting any humor ever again. We should put that joke in textbooks so future generations can be wary of becoming such an absolute comedic failure. I'm disappointed, hurt, and outright offended that my precious time has been wasted in my brain understanding that joke. In the time that took I was planning on helping kids who have been orphaned, but because of that you've wasted my time explaining the obscene integrity of your terrible attempt at comedy. Now those kids are suffering without meals and there's nobody to blame but you. I hope you're happy with what you have done and I truly hope you can move on and learn from this piss poor attempt.

[Nikki in Niagara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reason for Reading: I have not read this popular Canadian author, but the book intrigued me as I do like quirky, snide humour.

I'll start off with some caveats. This book is *not* for children, nor really *for* young people if one is thinking young means teenager. The word young here would apply to the opposite of old. I think the book would have been more appropriately named "Highly Inappropriate Tales *About* Young People". The publisher's summary contains this phrase " If you are over the age of consent," and if I was to recommend this book to a certain group of readers I would say those most likely to really enjoy these stories would be adults who don't really like children very much.

The stories presented here are dark, and there is no denying they are humorous but they are likely to offend just as much as they are to make one snicker. Some stories are about personified inanimate objects such as a juice box, a mini van, a fashion doll and an action figure while the others are about children (elementary to young teens, about 13). Children are murdered, tortured, harmed and caused discomfort. All of this is in the realm of snide humour. These are not fables, they have no morals. They don't have "gotcha" endings where the bad guy gets his in the end; no the bad guy always wins. Most of them really did nothing for me. I tolerated them; they certainly didn't offend me as I've read in some of the other reviews of this book. I did smirk here and there but generally the endings just fell flat with me. The one I did enjoy was "Sandra, The Truly Dreadful Babysitter". Upon arriving at her first job, the illustration shows her arriving via Mary Poppins descending from the air via an umbrella with a satchel in her other hand. She "asked the twins what they wanted to do. They said they wanted to play video games and text their friends, and Sandra said, Those are stupid and boring ideas. Let's all go shoplifting." This is the type of humour you can expect.

I did enjoy the illustration more than the text. They are quirky, creepy and add an extra element to the tales not always spelled out in the story. I think this book of stories is going to appeal to a certain audience but will offend a larger audience who buys it not realizing exactly what these stories have to offer. Certainly imaginative writing, but "caveat emptor".

[Jaclyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought that this book would be funny, the short narratives seemed to be promising. With titles like "Brandon, the action figure with issues" and "Cindy the terrible role model," I was expecting to laugh a lot. While some of the stories were amusing, I didn't find any of them funny, and I don't really get the purpose of the book. I didn't think any of the titles were particularly inappropriate for young people, I just thought they were bizarre and unconnected. Overall, this book did not fulfill my expectations.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book in 2015 at The Sydney Writer’s Festival, after hearing Douglas Coupland speak.

Finally took the book down from the shelf and read it. The last story of the walking dead substitute teacher was my stand out.

[Remy · Rating 1 out of 5]

this is just an edgier version of that David Walliams crap

[ʀᴀᴠᴇɴ ★ · Rating 2 out of 5]

that one with the undead substitute teacher was great

[Kimberly · Rating 1 out of 5]

So there I was. Looking at the books in the library and then the title of this one popped out at me. Then when I saw the cover I was convinced I had to give it a go. If only for the giggles. Now I admit I didn't go into reading this book with high expectations. In fact I actually went into it with very low expectations.

At only 131 pages I knew I wasn't going to be wowed. I was just looking for a quick and easy read because I seem to be falling behind this month in terms of my reading goal for the month. I was how every pleasantly surprised.

My favourite part about the book was the artwork done by illustrator Graham Roumieu. They reminded me of Quentin Blake's style. Blake as some of you may recall illustrated famous children's novelist Roald Dahl's books. So this book offered a bit of nostalgia even if the drawings weren't done by Blake .

I though the stories we sort of funny but not as outrageous as I had thought they might be given the ttle especially. I thought they were more quirky than anything and while they weren't anything special they did provide enough entertainment for me to derive a few laughs from.

So if you've read the author's works before and liked them I think you have a good chance of liking this one as well, at least a lot of people seem to say that. However if you're like me and hadn't read any of the author's previous books yet I suggest that you not purchase this one. Instead please check it out from your local library.

[Angela · Rating 1 out of 5]

I absolutely detested this book (maybe that's the point?) I always read everything Doug Coupland publishes but not because I admire his work. Ever since Life After God, I feel some kind of connection to this author, some responsibility to him. It's as if Coupland is a family member with which I have had a severe falling out. And, despite the fact that almost everything he says makes me angry, I am compelled to read it because I still, deep deep down, care about him.

I would never ever ever recommend this book and I can't even imagine who would like it. It's not particularly imaginative and the illustrations are just creepy. If it was, at the very least, funny, I could forgive all that. But it's not funny--it's just inane. It's even worse that Player One and All Families are Psychotic--and that's really saying something. Are Coupland's publishers afraid of him or something? Why don't they just say "no!" to his worst ideas?

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHHAhahahahahahaha!
This book just made me laugh...it had the same flavour as Grimmer Tales which also made me LAUGH. OUT. LOUD.
My favourite selection was Donald, the Incredibly Hostile Juice Box. Those of you without a sense of humour and those who do not enjoy dark comedy may want to just move on, nothing to see here.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange little read, but it is Douglas Coupland, after all, so you shouldn't be expecting anything less than weird. Entertaining, but only if you have a bit of a sick sense of humour. Full review to come in the December 2011 issue of Quill & Quire.

[Ann-Kristine · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Gaelan D'costa · Rating 2 out of 5]

The positives:
The art is enjoyable, and does fit the feeling of a fairy tale or children's book.
The form isn't too bad, it does give off a loose feel of a children's tale.

The intent is interesting: Can we write a bunch of unpleasant characters in a children's form, like a murder ballad. Possibly for a lot of people's that's good enough.

But therein lies the rub: the narrative unpleasantness is there just for the sake of being unpleasant; if this is an exercise of form, I am far too illerate of children's stories to appreciate it. I enjoyed the description of the nasty characters and how it manifests, and perhaps with an extra 25% to each story, there would have been a feeling of closure or a sense of meaning I could have gotten out of these short stories.

But that didn't happen. I had some nasty episodes to horse-guffaw at, but that was it. I am not expecting some kind of hamfisted or even nuanced morality as to why these characters are bad; but I would have appreciated something that made me feel these anti-heroes were justified. Did they have a backing story that contextualized their behaviour? (Arguably the juice drink box had one). No, they simply existed as they were, and in some cases, tolerated by ignoramuses whose chargers suffered in association.

I want more children's stories, like Guillermo Del Toro films, like Grimm's fairy tales (that have a thesis I disagree with but at least offer a thesis), that make the nastiness of a tale worth absorbing. There is a place for dark stories, for malevolent characters, but the feel of this story didn't grand them the weight they deserve; it neither ramped out their menance nor contextualized their behaviours. It was an excuse to tolerate jerks, to throw up one's hands and "oh well, what can you do, it was funny." without even a deliberate and honest nihilism.

That's not for me, and perhaps this book gives me a good capsule way to recognize that sentiment in others, so I can leave them and let live.

[Marina · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2) The expectations that the book jacket, illustrations and title set are very deceiving. I know this novel was suppose to fall into the humor genre, but there was nothing funny about these stories. They followed morally and physically terrible characters and quite frankly all the stories were very dark. I can recognize the greater morals and metaphors they tried to implement with each character’s story but this tactic was over shadowed by the terrible nature of every character, making redemption nearly impossible

The novel was a quick read. Great for checking a book off your reading goal. Writing and illustrations were both well done - the stories and branding were just not up to par and subsequently brought down the whole book.

[Stardustlyricer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Auf 133 Seiten werden hier von Coupland 7 Geschichten präsentiert die an Absurdität kaum zu überbieten sind. Saft-Tetra-Packs die Kantinen terrorisieren. Deutsche Austauschschüler mit merkwürdigen Marotten. Ein Minivan der reiche Kinder ausraubt und zur Belohnung Wodka in seinen Tank bekommt. Das alles biterböse erzählt. Ultra-schräger Humor. Dazu die Illustrationen von Graham Roumieu, den ich bisher nicht kannte, verstörend und immer passend. Es ist so etwas total Anderes von Coupland. Aber das ist es was ich an Coupland so liebe. Eben mal was ganz Anderes zu schreiben. Trotzdem ich von dem Buch sehr angetan bin, kann ich es nicht jeden empfehlen. Man muss schon Fan sein.

[Arthur · Rating 2 out of 5]

The jacket cover promises stories so funny that they'll make you pee. Ultimately, I must be part of the wrong generation (i.e. baby boomer/gen x)... the overuse of irony and sarcasm was just tiring to me. But maybe that is an insight into how millenials and their immediate pre-cursors think.

[Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring, unoriginal and not funny at all. Coupland and Roumieu are usually both great on their own, but in this collection they fail miserably. Like many others here have commented this collection feels rushed and it's not funny at all. Don't waste your time.

[RND · Rating 2 out of 5]

While well-written enough, with nice touches on details, and funny art, I guess I just don't get why this book exists, other than for a small dose of black humor where the authors try and see what they can get away with. It's alright, but also forgettable.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are weird stories and definitely not your typical stories for kids. But they are a great way to spark conversations with your kids about things others do that aren't great ideas or behaviors. Also great if you enjoy absurdity.

[Jack Bunce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious. A must read for Coupland lovers. Not safe for kids.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastically dark

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting take on humour....

[Jessica Bartlett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and easy read, imaginative dark humour. I certainly haven’t read anything else like it. It wasn’t quite to my tastes, but a few parts made me grin or chuckle.

[W Goldsmith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be part of elementary school curriculum

[malak · Rating 1 out of 5]

Was this supposed to be funny?

[Alexia]

Oyster Boy for people who hate kids but love poop jokes