Horrid Henry

Speaking of funny books for early readers, because I have have a small relative named Henry, Amazon highlights kid's books for me with that name in the title. That is how I ran across Horrid Henry. The book has been out for over twenty years in the United Kingdom, it just made its way to the US a few years ago. The author, Francesca Simon, is an American expat who lives in London. The book (and its many sequels are ) are laugh out loud funny. Our hero (or anti-hero), Henry, has "an amazing talent for trouble".

There are four short stories in the book, the first one illustrates why Henry is so horrid. Henry has a little brother known as Perfect Peter. Peter says "please" and "thank you", helps make dinner, and loves vegetables. One day, Henry wonders what would happen if he were perfect. His experiment in perfection drives his perfect brother into horrid behavior. Perfectly horrid!

In the third story, Henry and his frenemy, Moody Margaret, fight over who gets to be Captain Hook, make Perfect Peter walk the plank 14 times, create a huge mess making glop and dare each other to taste it before giving some to the unsuspecting Peter.

There are dozens of books in this series. The illustrator, Tony Ross's drawings remind me a bit of Quentin Blake's drawing for the Roald Dahl books. The Sonoma County Library has three copies and many of the sequels. The AR is 3.3.