True Disaster Stories

Terry Deary's Terribly True Stories

by Terry Deary

What would you do if disaster struck? Would you be a hero or a coward? This is a collection of true stories of different people involved in many different kinds of disaster, and how they behaved in life or death situations.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

A former actor, theatre-director and drama teacher, Deary says he began writing when he was 29. Most famously, he is one of the authors of the Horrible Histories series of books popular among children for their disgusting details, gory information and humorous pictures and among adults for getting children interested in history. Books in the series have been widely translated into other languages and imitated.

A cartoon series has been made of the series of books and was shown on CiTV for a period in 2002.

The first series of a live-action comedy sketch show of the same name was shown on CBBC in 2009 and a second series is due.

Terry is also known widely throughout children and adult reading groups alike for his True Stories series (see below for series list).

He received an Honorary Doctorate of Education from the University of Sunderland in 2000. His numerous accolades also include the Blue Peter "Best Nonfiction Author of the Century" Award in the U.K.

-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good collection of real life disasters (well as good as these tragic events will be). The dramatised fiction does get the job done for each event but just isn't as enthralling as the facts at the end of each short story. The summary of other events at the end of the stories definitely made the book a lot better than if it hadn't been in it. Good for young adolescents who are into more depressing and grim history about disasters

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few great short stories enjoyed listening to them all.

[Suzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these books, just wish they were longer!

[Xanthi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these disasters I had heard about before, but a lot were new to me. I wasn't keen on the dramatising style of the writing but suspected that was there to make it more engrossing for younger readers.
I did like the Fact Files parts, however.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a disaster story to do with boats, aeroplanes, trains, the plague, famine and more. Each story was followed by a couple of paragraphs about a few similar stories. Teary Deary's style of writing really suits these books. This is the second time I have read this book and the mix of true disaster stories, a couple of fictional additions/changes and some emotional points of view works extremely well. I think Deary's completely right when he says that the reason most people read about disasters is that we wonder how we would act in those kind of situations.