A Horrid Factbook: Crazy Creatures by Francesca Simon and Tony Ross
| A Horrid Factbook: Crazy Creatures by Francesca Simon and Tony Ross | |
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| Category: Children's Non-Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Sam Tyler
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| Summary: Let Horrid Henry take you on a fact filled journey all about creatures and their habits. The book is naughty and full of facts, if a little incoherent at times. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Maybe |
| Pages: 96 | Date: July 2015 |
| Publisher: Orion Children's Books | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781444014440 | |
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The perceived wisdom is that it is harder to get young boys to read than it is young girls, but you try telling that to my nephews. They often have their heads so far in a book that their nose sticks out the other end. However, whilst one loves fiction, the other loves fact. If you think about it, you could use an extremely popular fiction character to tell children some real facts and trick them; but that would be a horrible thing to do.
Horrid Henry is a character who is used to being a bit naughty and does not mind getting his hands dirty. The same can be said of nature. There are so many strange and wacky animals out there with an abundance of bodily functions – what joy. A Horrid Factbook: Crazy Creatures combines Henry's cheeky attitude with information about the animal kingdom in a series of facts that even adults won't know.
Fact books are very popular with the children I have met; The Guinness Book of Records has been a top seller for years. Crazy Creatures is part of a series of books that cannot quite meet up to the coherence that the long running Guinness series has. As a set of informatics, Crazy Creatures is entertaining. Each page contains two or three snippets of information about an animal and maybe an illustration by Tony Ross in his famous style.
A disjointed feel plagues the book throughout as Francesca Simon is unable to give the book any real sort of coherence. There are a series of chapters that cover different aspects of creatures, but many of the facts could be in all of them. I am not sure at what point cynicism enters this book – is Horrid Henry being used to encourage young boys to read non-fiction they would usually avoid, or is the character being added to try and sell more books as the series winds down?
I like to think that Simon is a children's author of note and is releasing these books as a way of expanding her fans' reading palette. The addition of Ross' illustrations means that they get more Henry between books and the facts are fun. There is no doubt that there are many better fact books out there that cover creatures, but for a Horrid Henry fan, this may be the only thing they are willing to pick up. Crazy Creatures will do the job of teaching these reluctant non-fiction readers some new and funny facts.
Deadly Pole to Pole Diaries by Steve Backshall is a great non-fiction children's book about all manner of creatures for the slightly older reader, whilst straight forward animal fact fans should try Dead or Alive? by Clive Gifford and Sarah Horne.
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You can read more book reviews or buy A Horrid Factbook: Crazy Creatures by Francesca Simon and Tony Ross at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy A Horrid Factbook: Crazy Creatures by Francesca Simon and Tony Ross at Amazon.com.
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