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Fearsome Tales for Fiendish Kids
You've seen them on the TV, now read the original stories! This is the third in the Grizzly Tales series of books.A raucous book filled with demented and horrible children who get their just desserts. Luscious writing spiced up with injections of carbolic humour. You'll meet a boy reduced to ashes while playing a stolen trumpet in an electric storm, a junior embezzler who inflates a flattened road-kill with a bicycle pump and a flock of pink butterflies made of peeled-off eyelids. Join in and relish the deserving victims' ghastly fates! Prepare to laugh, gasp and squirm as you read these cautionary tales. Includes Mr Peeler's Butterflies, Dr Moribundus, Death By Chocolate, Bessy O'Messy, Well'ard Willard and more Grizzly Tales For Gruesome Kids is a series of modern morality tales for children. In each story a horrid, sadistic, brute of a child meets his or her deservedly grotesque end.“Be warned – Jamie Rix’s splendidly nasty short stories can be genuinely scary, but as the protaganists are obnoxious brats with names like Peregrine and Tristram, you may find yourself cheering as they meet their sticky ends.” Independent on Sunday "These are moral tales told in a honey-lush prose spiced with salutory bolts of carbolic and with an amoral relish for the deserving victims' ghastly Nemeses." Books For Keeps “Mix Dahl with Belloc and you can anticipate with glee these tales of Jamie Rix. Even William Brown’s antics pale beside noisy chocoholic Serena Slurp…” Daily Telegraph “Fifteen well-crafted stories each show how the disorderly and the fantastic lurk just beneath the ordinary and the workaday. A smashing summer evening’s dipping-into trove this one.” The Guardian “An excellent book of stories for all but the most timid…the accumulation of grimness is also part of the effect, so older children can enjoy this collection by themselves and adults can have a marvellous time reading them to younger ones.” Books for your Children
224 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1996
18 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 13, 2012
Generally speaking, I was a party of one in primary school: as far as reading books was concerned. It just wasn't the cool thing to do. However, there are two books that EVERYBODY must have borrowed from the school library during their time there. One of those was 'Where's Wally?'. The other was 'Fearsome Tales for Fiendish Kids', which was part of a series of four story compilations by Jamie Rix.
Not ringing any bells? Try this one on for size: 'Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids'. That was another book in the series, and it gave its name to a popular cartoon series on ITV in the early Noughties. The series adapted each of the stories in every book for the small screen.
Remember that? I certainly do. It scared the bejeezus out of me when I was little, because both the books and the TV series depicted naughty children getting their comeuppance. Their comeuppance was, more often than not, a grisly death or a horrible punishment from which they'd never escape. For example, 'Fiendish Tales' saw one girl (who pulled sickies almost every school day) being impaled on a giant needle, and a boy (who bullied anybody he felt was weaker than himself) being spectacularly electrocuted by a lightning strike. To name but two.
Of course, I read the book because everyone else had. I had avoided the TV series like the plague - the sound of the ominous organ-based theme tune was enough to make me burst into tears, never mind the show itself. However, the book was somehow easier to deal with: though not by much. It doesn't matter whether you read the description in a book or see it unfold as a TV cartoon: a grisly death is a grisly death. You would do well to inform young, nervous potential readers that the book pulls no punches in the descriptions of the naughty children's punishments. Despite all that, I still enjoyed the book.
Why? Because it was entertaining. For God knows what reason, people love being scared. It certainly makes for a memorable read. Which leads me very nicely into my next point: the book is instructive. Granted: naughty children aren't generally skewered on surgical needles like kebab meat if they act up: but this does show them that bad behaviour has consequences. Such a memorable fate would always remind them of that and hopefully teach them a lesson they'd do well to learn.
A couple of years ago, when Nickelodeon began to broadcast reruns of 'Grizzly Tales', I braved a few episodes. For closure. Actually, they were pretty entertaining: but I still had nightmares, and that creepy theme music still filled my very soul with fear.
Once a scaredy-cat, always a scaredy-cat.
Not ringing any bells? Try this one on for size: 'Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids'. That was another book in the series, and it gave its name to a popular cartoon series on ITV in the early Noughties. The series adapted each of the stories in every book for the small screen.
Remember that? I certainly do. It scared the bejeezus out of me when I was little, because both the books and the TV series depicted naughty children getting their comeuppance. Their comeuppance was, more often than not, a grisly death or a horrible punishment from which they'd never escape. For example, 'Fiendish Tales' saw one girl (who pulled sickies almost every school day) being impaled on a giant needle, and a boy (who bullied anybody he felt was weaker than himself) being spectacularly electrocuted by a lightning strike. To name but two.
Of course, I read the book because everyone else had. I had avoided the TV series like the plague - the sound of the ominous organ-based theme tune was enough to make me burst into tears, never mind the show itself. However, the book was somehow easier to deal with: though not by much. It doesn't matter whether you read the description in a book or see it unfold as a TV cartoon: a grisly death is a grisly death. You would do well to inform young, nervous potential readers that the book pulls no punches in the descriptions of the naughty children's punishments. Despite all that, I still enjoyed the book.
Why? Because it was entertaining. For God knows what reason, people love being scared. It certainly makes for a memorable read. Which leads me very nicely into my next point: the book is instructive. Granted: naughty children aren't generally skewered on surgical needles like kebab meat if they act up: but this does show them that bad behaviour has consequences. Such a memorable fate would always remind them of that and hopefully teach them a lesson they'd do well to learn.
A couple of years ago, when Nickelodeon began to broadcast reruns of 'Grizzly Tales', I braved a few episodes. For closure. Actually, they were pretty entertaining: but I still had nightmares, and that creepy theme music still filled my very soul with fear.
Once a scaredy-cat, always a scaredy-cat.
November 8, 2011
One of the best books I've ever read; I read it as a kid and it quickly became a lasting favorite. The writing is fresh and upbeat, and it doesn't 'dumb down' the stories. These are fables anyone can appreciate.
September 10, 2023
What a great collection of wildly inspirational and fiendish short stories by a writer who obviously knows his audience. There’s nothing stale or rank about the writing in this collection, which range far in each stories subject matter with each having the running theme of involving the appropriately titles books problematic children. A recommended read that was pursued solely based on the fact I loved the cartoon on CITV when I was younger.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews