SOLVED. Kids' series of short story collections about children behaving badly with magical consequences. [s]

[Trin]

Read these in sometime in elementary school, late '80s/early '90s. They were collections of magical short stories about children acting badly. One story I remember all-too vividly involved how this child would abuse a cat and pull out his whiskers, and then he turned into a cat and was abused.

I feel like the author might have been British because there was definitely the vibe of kids left alone in estates to get up to no good. The books were a little scary too if I remember correctly--like they weren’t “cute” magical, they were gothic.

They may also have been divided up into a “blue” book or a “red” book or something--but I could be conflating with something else, like the Lang fairytale books. As my recollection goes, these collections were not illustrated.

Any ideas? Thanks so much.

[Rainbowheart]

Struwwelpeter?

There are lots of different editions.

[Rosa]

The cat story sounds like "The Cat-hood of Maurice," by E. Nesbit. It's in The Magic World.

[Caroline]

maybe one if the “Mrs Piggle Wiggle” books...?

[Trin]

Rosa wrote: "The cat story sounds like "The Cat-hood of Maurice," by E. Nesbit. It's in The Magic World."

Oh, wow! Rosa, you got it. It is definitely Nesbit, and that story specifically (that I think was mentally being mashed up with something else -- maybe indeed the Lang). Thank you!

[Rosa]

You're welcome! It's also in the anthology Fantasy, if you might have read that instead of The Magic World.