This is one of 10 books in the Horrid Henry series that I bought for my son this Christmas. I bought them as part of a pack of 10 for only £9.99 from a book club which visits the primary school I work in….They leave a selection of books for you to browse and order from, I am sure it was The Book People ( www.bookpeople.co.uk ) but cannot be 100% sure as I have visited the website and cannot find this offer available now. You can however still buy this book on it's own and in the 10 pack from various websites like Amazon and Ebay, prices starting from about £1.99 for the single book and from about £9.99 + p&p for the multi pack.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Francesca Simon
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A little bit about the author….She was born in USA and went to Yale and Oxford Universities. She was a freelance journalist for 10 years and now writes full time. She now lives in North London with her husband Martin and son Josh.
She started writing children's books in 1989 after the birth of her son, when she realised that all she was reading was children's books and ideas of her own were popping into her head.
Her first book "But what does a hippopotamus say?" came from a conversation with her son when they had been reading a book on animal noises and he asked "What noise does a caterpillar make?" She thought it would be great to do a book with the more unusual animal noises which children see in books. The Horrid Henry idea came when a friend asked her to write a story about a horrid child……read on to find out more about this little boy that every parent/teacher/grown up will relate to!
This is a book of 4 short stories so I will review each one individually.***Horrid Henry Eats a Vegetable***
Here we have Horrid Henry and Perfect Peter (his brother) and his mum and dad sitting down to eat dinner and Henry refuses to eat his vegetables and his poor mum tries bribery…."if you eat your vegetables for 5 nights in a row, we'll take you to Gobble and Go!" which is Henry's favourite fast food restaurant. Is this an easy thing for Henry to do though? Can he eat the loathsome string beans, broccoli, peas, cabbage, sprouts? And will he get his reward at the end? Hmmmm read to find out!
This is a great little story that most children will relate to about hating vegetables, my son laughed at this one.
***Horrid Henry's Underpants***
It's Henry's birthday and he has opened all his presents bar one….It is small and he thinks it may be some money that he can use to buy the toys he really wanted…..but opens it to discover his Great Aunt Gerta thinks he is a girl! Under the wrapping is a pair of…………..pink frilly lacy big girl pants!!!! He chucks them in the bin with disgust, when the doorbell rings he knows it is his friend Rotten Ralph. If Ralph saw those knickers his life wouldn't be worth living…… so he hid them at the back of his underwear drawer. Next morning Henry oversleeps and is running late for school, He sleepily got himself dressed, reaching in for a clean pair of underpants and went off to school still feeling tired. Halfway through the morning he notices his pants are itching him and sneaks a peak and is shocked to discover he is wearing the dreaded Girl Pants!!!! He tries everything he can to get rid of the pants…..Does he succeed? Read and see!
My son loves this story best of all, He laughs his head off and shouts girl pants all the time at his sister and I usually respond with " I'll make you wear your sisters girl pants if I hear anymore of it" lol
***Horrid Henry's Sick Day***
Henry's brother Perfect Peter is sick…he wants to go to school but mum says NO! Henry is stunned….he wants to stay off school too. He convinces himself he is feeling sick too in order to try to get his dad to give him the day off school. It works! Mum had to take the day off work to look after them both. Henry wants to watch one tv programme but Peter wants to watch another so there is a big argument about it, in fact there is arguments about practically everything. Then dad comes home feeling poorly too…. Mum has her work cut out for her and is left running about after the 3 of them, This leaves her feeling very tired and rotten too…… 3:30pm comes and suddenly Henry feels much better, Does he get to go out and play? Read for yourself to find out what happens….
I liked this one the best as it is something I used to do myself when I was in school…fake illnesses and suddenly get better, my own children haven't discovered this one yet, and after reading this to them I doubt they will try it! (I hope)
Henry's mum wants him to sit and write all of his Christmas thank you letters but Henry has other ideas of fun! He'd much rather be watching TV, playing games etc but his mum is adamant. Dad told him to write a whole page for each letter…..His first letter was to Aunt Ruby and he wrote in huge writing which covered the whole page "Dear Aunt Ruby, thank you for the present, Henry" Mum was not amused and told him he had to write 5 sentences. So 5 sentences he wrote…..But were they nice thank you letters? He thought he'd done extremely well and went about setting up his own little Thank you letter writing business charging money for each letter he wrote….He had now 17 letters to write arghhh. Now 2 weeks after Christmas the reply's to the letters come back….are people pleased? Read and find out!
This was a good little story but my son said it was his least favourite of the four…only because there wasn't enough funnies in it I suspect though. Still a good little read.
Whilst I have written a short synopsis on each story I feel I haven't given the whole story away and will leave a few laughs and surprises in for the reader. Each story is short enough to be able to read one to your child in one evening or two evenings, If your child is old enough (I'd recommend from 7 yrs +) then he/she will have great fun reading this for themselves too.
There are some nice illustrations throughout the book too by Tony Ross, these are black and white similar to pencil/charcoal drawings.
The other books in the series of 10 that I bought are:
Horrid Henry Horrid Henry's Nits Horrid Henry and the Secret Club Horrid Henry's Stinkbomb Horrid Henry Meets the Queen Horrid Henry's Haunted House Horrid Henry and the Mummy's Curse Horrid Henry's Revenge Horrid Henry's Joke Book
There are more in the series too but not included in the pack I bought.
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Published 2003 By Orion Children's Books Paperback 81 pages RRP £4.99
This product has not yet been reviewed. 
