Horrid Henry Rules the World - Francesca Simon

If having practically every Horrid Henry book out, my daughter also insisted that she purchase one of the compilation books, I would have moaned if it hadn’t been the fact she had saved her pocket money for it!

The book I will review is - “Horrid Henry rules the world - ten favourite stories”

For anyone unfamiliar with this particular character, Horrid Henry is the creation of author Francesca Simon, who has become somewhat ...
...favourite stories from already published Horrid Henry books, though displayed in a somewhat different format!

These particular books are never boring and there are points of interest on every page, whether it be pictures, little speeches from a character or even down to ink spills and all the little bits of damage that could rotationally happen to children’s school books, there is always something to keep the child’s interest peaked!
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If having practically every Horrid Henry book out, my daughter also insisted that she purchase one of the compilation books, I would have moaned if it hadn’t been the fact she had saved her pocket money for it!

The book I will review is - “Horrid Henry rules the world - ten favourite stories”

For anyone unfamiliar with this particular character, Horrid Henry is the creation of author Francesca Simon, who has become somewhat of a god in my daughters eyes, even going as far as writing to her as part of her English coursework through school.

Henry is as his name suggests, horrid! He is the eldest of two sons, he is around 10 years old and has a younger brother Perfect Peter, who is around 5 years old.

Henry spends his whole time trying to be mean to his little brother, whilst getting through his school day as imaginatively as possible.
Alongside a whole plethora of funny characters, all with nicknames, example Beefy Bert, the nicknames are usually descriptive of the person and helps you remember the characters from book to book, this is useful as there is quite a few different characters to read about!

Every aspect of the story is so true to life, everything that Henry would say to his brother, or to his best friend Rude Ralph, even down to some of the things they get up to are things that my kids and their friends would do and say, this is why I feel these books are so well loved by children of varying ages, with a good many of the books being used in school now!

As mentioned earlier this book contains ten favourite stories from already published Horrid Henry books, though displayed in a somewhat different format!

These particular books are never boring and there are points of interest on every page, whether it be pictures, little speeches from a character or even down to ink spills and all the little bits of damage that could rotationally happen to children’s school books, there is always something to keep the child’s interest peaked!

Horrid Henry’s injection - Nurse Needle has arrived at Henry’s school just in time for injection day, after watching all of his classmates going in and coming out acting as if their arms are ready to fall off, Henry has to come up with a plan fast to prevent his injection taking place.

Horrid Henrys school fair - The school fair is due to take place, and after finding his mum taking some piece of treasure from his bedroom (crap toy he hasn’t played with in the last 5 years!) and finally getting rid of that silly doll is batty old Aunt had brought him last Christmas (his aunt thinks his name is Henrietta!), Henry is overjoyed to find out that his mum is in charged of doing the treasure hunt. Can he get his treasure back, can he wangle the treasure hunt for him to win first prize, or will he get more than he bargained for?

Horrid Henry’s dance class - The school dance class, lead by Miss Impatience Tutu’s, yearly performance is quickly coming around, Peter has decided he wants to do dance lessons and be part of the show, due to that fact Henry and Peter’s mum has put them both into dance classes. Henry has other ideas wishing instead that he can do karate lessons with his best mate Rude Ralph. Will Henry stay the course or will he try and sabotage the dance performance in front of the entire school?

Horrid Henry’s computer - After being given an essay on writing about his most favourite teacher, Miss Lovely, Peter decides to make it nice and presentable he would type it up on the computer, then print it out. Henry has just brought himself the newest Robot game for the computer, so has no intentions of letting Peter do his homework. Will Peter get his homework done, will Henry win the day, or will someone decide that enough is enough?

Horrid Henry meets the queen - After Peter gets chosen to meet the queen, Henry goes out of his way to be horrid! After telling Peter that the queen could potentially put him the tower and chop of his head his attentions are drawn to another pressing matter…….televisions?! He becomes obsessed with just how many televisions the queen has in her palace, unfortunately he won’t be getting close enough to ask this potentially life changing question. Will he be able to get to her majesty to have his question answered or will events override his chance to do so?

Perfect Peters revenge - After being pushed around for the last time (as far as Peter is concerned anyway), Peter decides he should teach Henry a lesson he won’t soon forget, there is just one problem, he is a good boy so he can’t really think of what to do! After having a brainwave and writing a love letter to Moody Margaret next door from Henry Peter now has to live on his wits! Will Henry guess who sent the lesson before Margaret and now Sour Susan kill each other/him, not the sort of love triangle Henry wanted, he haste both of them!

Horrid Henry and the football fiend - After discovering that his favourite and local footy team Ashton are finally playing against a BIG team (Man U!, not my opinion but the books! Lol), Henry begs his mum and dad for tickets, due to his recent horrid behaviour he doesn’t seem to have much chance of getting them! However after the Henry’s teacher, Miss Battle-Axe wins some, she decides to give them to a member of her class, that person will be the “player of the match” in a football match that she will referee. Will Henry get the tickets through teamwork, or through other methods?

Horrid Henry’s sick day - After Peter throws up and is told he can stay at home from school, Henry decides that he too is far to ill to go to school. The fact he has yet to do his homework or practise his spellings has nothing to do with it!
After failing to get what he wants on the telly, or getting waited on hand and foot by his mum, the rest of Henry’s family roll back home showing the same symptoms as Peter has, Henry finds himself waiting on his family, will Henry get to watch his programmes or will he come down with the virus?

Horrid Henry peeks at Peters diary - After repeatedly breaking in to Peters bedroom and finally locating his diary, Henry has a quick read.
Henry is disgusted by how nice Peter is about everyone in there, and decides to change a few parts to make Peter a bit “edgier!”, what Henry doesn’t realise is that it is diary week at school. Will Peter realise his diary has been tampered with, or will he discover far to late?

Henry’s Christmas play - After the parts are divvied up, Henry is not impressed that he hasn’t been given the role of Joseph, he is even more disgusted when he realises his younger brother has been given the role, this being the case he decides to juice up his role of the inn keeper. Will his performance add to the play or will it fall on it’s back whilst he reaches for stardom?

I haven’t written comments about each story because even I thoroughly enjoyed each and every story, with the computer one being my favourite, that one in particular reminds me of my kids and household, and having to share one laptop between four of us!

The stories are easy for my daughter to read on her own, but are still not dumbed down so much that I wouldn’t enjoy reading them to her.

As mentioned earlier this is a compilation of previously published stories, but this is a much more modern version of them.
Alongside the wonderful text and story, the pictures in this boo are no longer black and white almost graffiti scribbles, but coloured and much more detailed, with each story being a book within a book, even having it’s own front cover.

The stories are the perfect length not too long as to lose the child’s interest, but there re also plenty of pictures and points of interest to discuss as well.

Between each story there are fun pages that either hold spot the difference pictures, activities for the child reader even through to notes that Henry has passed to his mates in class, usually to Margaret slagging her off, very funny to read and very believable!

This is the perfect to encourage your child to self read or take up an interest in books and reading, perfect for the boys as they want to be him, perfect for the girls as the books are so funny and Henry is a type of anti hero, meaning that he is usually the underdog but sort of lovable in a way.

This book retails at £8.99, but I pretty sure this would be available for pennies on www.amazon.co.uk

Thanks for reading x

 

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