Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids (book)

The Frightfully-Busy family lives in South London and knew nothing about each other: the parents were workaholics that had no time for their children and their children Tristram and Candy spent every day bullying their nanny, Mrs Mac, and tell their parents a different story the moment they came home. One day, they claimed that she had beaten them with their father's expensive golf clubs which got Mrs Mac fired, but that would be the moment where troubles began. Mrs Frightfully-Busy is devastated that they had to get rid of an old family friend as she looked through a telephone directory but discovers the Animal Magic agency. 30 minutes after booking, a talking python is on the doorstep wearing an apron and carrying a briefcase, but Mrs and Mrs Frightfully-Busy had no time for any briefing and left for work immediately after the python's entire 12 metres (39 ft) long body was in the hallway. The python tells Candy and Tristam to treat her as a human nanny, ironically consenting to the children's behaviour and removing any fear they had of snakes. They burned her tail in boiling water, tied her up and dunked her head in the toilet, made her slither over thumbtacks, and left her in the garden for birds to peck at her. When their parents arrived home at 6 pm, the python slithered out of the house as fast as she could, but when the parents confront the children, Tristram claims that the python tried to strangle him.

The next morning, Mrs Frightfully-Busy telephones a complaint to Animal Magic, who promises to send a better nanny. 15 minutes later, the parents rushed out of the house and a giant spider crawled in. Tristram takes her to the bathroom and he and his sister splash and pour water over the spider, and then demand that she makes a climbing frame in the garden out of her web. She weaves as the children order her to make it bigger until it stretched across two gardens and was as high as the chimney. As she slept, the children tied her up in it and poked her with a stick until their parents came home. After their father escorts her out in a wheelbarrow, the children sob that she tied them to the ceiling by their ankles. Mrs Frightfully-Busy telephones another complaint the next morning and goes to work immediately after, leaving enough time for Tristram to wait at the front door with a bat. Seconds later, he smacked an alligator on her head as Candy laughed. When their parents came home, they found a sleeping alligator and no children. The alligator admits that she ate them, lays two eggs and leaves. Tristram and Candy hatch out the eggs and immediately confess to their abusive behaviour as they hugged their mother. The door knocks and Mr Frightfully-Busy finds Mrs Mac on the doorstep, who was hoping that his children had found a new nanny. Mr Frightfully-Busy admits that it had been hard, rehires her and helps with her three suitcases. One was made of snakeskin, one was small and fuzzy, and the other was made of alligator-skin.

In the Indian village of Jaisalmer, there was once a monster that used to terrorise at sundown. It lived in the nearby caves and every brave knight that attempted to slay it for ₹1,000 (one thousand rupees) was never seen again. Tulsidor was a farmer's son who was the tallest boy in his class, and Mathematics was his worst subject. There was going to be a Maths exam soon but Tulsidor was unlikely to pass, no matter how many private tutors his parents hired. One night, being distracted by 2+1 and 1+2 made him forget that sunset was over, and the monster charged towards the village looking for food. Tulsidor fainted and woke up in a dark cave, spotting the monster sitting opposite reading, but is caught trying to escape. The monster offers to teach him how to count and uses his many body parts to help Tulsidor with addition. Tulsidor enjoys his free Maths lesson and learns how 2+1 and 1+2 both equal 3, and explains that he had heard about the monster kidnapping and eating people and was worried the same would happen to him. The monster is surprised to hear these rumours and replies that he wanted friends but all the animals would run away because of his appearance, and he was very clumsy because of his giant feet which constantly destroyed houses in the village.

Three days later, Tulsidor returned home unharmed. When he got the highest test grade in the Mathematics exam, his teacher demands to meet the person who taught him. The next day, Tulsidor escorted the monster to his school. The village panicked but Tulsidor reassured that the monster was the new Mathematics teacher with no intention of eating humans. Jaisalmer became the birthplace of history's best mathematicians and still is the best place in the world to learn maths 400 years later.

Despite being closed and looking abandoned, once a year, an Italian pasta factory whirs and chugs through the night. No one had ever been seen leaving and/or visiting and its original owner's whereabouts were unknown, but whenever it came to life, the front gates would open to allow a black car to drive out and back in. Then the gates would close and the factory would be quiet for another year without Venice noticing.

In the UK, lived Timothy King, a boy who threw violent tantrums over every meal his mother gave him. His mother was terrible at discipline and had failed to make her son listen to her, whereas her husband was an emotionally distant workaholic and used army slang that often confused Timothy and made him misbehave more. One morning, Timothy picked up his plate full of breakfast and threw it at the kitchen sink, splattering the eggs against the window. As his mother cried in helpless despair, the front door made an unlocking sound. Nervously, Mr King threatens that he was in the army[lower-alpha 1] but takes his wife with him for support as he leaves the kitchen to investigate the hallway. Now alone, Timothy smells flour, and then spaghetti, and feels pressure on his mouth, which nearly suffocates him and feels like a hand trying to shut him up, except the "fingers" brushing his cheek felt like thin sticks. When his parents return to the kitchen, Timothy could breathe again and the smells had disappeared. His mother later theorises that The Spaghetti Man had just visited, explaining that he kidnaps children who refuse to eat their dinners. She assumes that Timothy had been spared and given a chance of redemption. Timothy scoffs at the tall tale, although he had eaten everything his mother had served him since. This soon changed the next breakfast when Timothy reverted to his old behaviour when a plate of toast was placed in front of him. He rants about his hatred of the food and his family, and declares that he will not eat it as he leaves the kitchen. Mrs King followed and dragged him back to the table as she tells him that she will not let him leave until he had finished.

The next day, Timothy was still at the table with the day-old toast in front of him. He tried to get rid of it: he threw it in the bin, he sneaked out of the house and shoved it in a postman's bag, and tried to feed it to the goldfish, but the toast would still return to his plate. The next day, Mr King went to work and Mrs King went out to the shop. Now that Timothy was home alone, he set out his revenge: he emptied the fridge into a bin bag and stuffed it behind his parents' bed; he broke every lightbulb in the house with rocks from the garden and kicked the cat; he graffitied into a door with a screwdriver; and went to the bathroom to flood it. The latch on the front door unlocked. Timothy stood triumphant as the bathwater rose, excited to see his mother's reaction to catching him in the act. When the bath overflowed the bathroom door flew open but there was no one there apart from the smell of spaghetti.

Timothy wakes up in a room full of children with labels of food on their clothes. A girl with red, curly hair explains that they are in Italy and will be turned into food by the Spaghetti Man. She shows off her curly twirls label and points out Timothy's lasagne one. Timothy gags at the thought of lasagne and attempts to start a revolt, jumping onto a table and yelling at the room full of children that they have been lied to and should leave, but in the doorway behind him stands a smug chef with a maniacal laugh smacking flour off his hands. That night, Venitian citizens slept as the abandoned factory chugged and whirred until sunrise as the black car left and re-entered through the open gates. Back home in the UK, Mr and Mrs King's lives improved, now that their son was not around to throw his food and yell about how much he hated them; Mrs King had noticed that Timothy was gone but never told her busy husband. When he went back to work one morning, she went out to the shops to look for some lasagne for dinner.

Felicity is constantly pampered by her father, who nicknames her Princess, to the point of seemingly believing she was one. She had so many clothes and shoes, she had been featured in Vogue and Harpers and Queen articles. One day, her mother invites a wrinkly woman with a crocodile-skin briefcase into the house. This woman was Miss Shears, a representative of a fashion catalogue, and Felicity's mother wanted to show her daughter different clothes. Felicity throws a tantrum because her father buys her new clothes every week but she is ignored as Miss Shears took out brochures of outfits that were not pink and lacy. Felicity continues her tantrum and runs out of the room, leaving her mother to choose her the frumpiest outfits she had ever seen. She refused to talk to her mother for many days and hid in the garden shed when the outfits were delivered. She was horrified to discover that her old clothes had been moved out of her wardrobe and replaced with clothes of different shades of blue. Her mother begs her to try something on but Felicity refuses until her mother angrily gives up. Because she could not find her old clothes, she improvised with bath towels, a fishing hat, wellington boots and a fur coat, and ran for the school bus, leaving her parents to bicker about who raised her better.

Felicity regretted her decision once she arrived at school. Other pupils teased her and the costume felt uncomfortable everywhere. In order not to make her mother win, she planned to get rid of her new outfits by rewrapping them and sending them back to Miss Shears. At 11:30 pm that night, she woke up and took the wrapping paper out of her bin. A black parcel sent to "Only to be opened by a princess" appeared on the floor, containing tiny scissors inside. Felicity went to the wardrobe and cut at her new clothes. As she laughed triumphantly, snipped fabric fell on the floor in rags until she had no clothes left. The scissors jumped out of her hand and landed on the top shelf of the wardrobe where her old clothes had been hidden and destroyed them as well. The fabric in the room created a tornado that spun around Felicity and carried her across the room; Miss Shears' face appeared in the window and she floated away on a broomstick. In the morning, all of Felicity's trimmed clothes had disappeared and her parents are confused. She went to school in her duvet and has done so ever since.

King Basil ruled Ruritania for numerous years and was loved and respected by his subjects and government. Unfortunately, he never had heirs so when he died, everyone panicked. The government eventually decided to advertise the position through an audition-like process but they had no luck and a year later the government was certain that everyone in Ruritania had been considered and interviewed. Word reached Draconia on the other side of the border and its Prince Egor could not wait. The next day, he assembled his army and charged through the country, destroying every Ruitanian thing in their paths until they reached the kingdom walls. Egor abandoned the team for time to himself and discovered the River Alter, a famously magical river. After washing his face, his reflection gives him words of encouragement before being dispersed by a pike near the ripples, which inspires Egor to ambush the castle.

The overnight battle was long and bloody, and Ruitania gained a cruel, selfish king the next morning. All the fun that Basil had allowed was now banned by King Egor, and his subjects barely left their homes. Members of parliament woke up to guards sending them to the dungeons and children of peasants were assigned to work for the monarchy. Egor loved being king because everyone automatically became a yes man but he soon got bored of crying peasants. He went back to Alter for more tips and the reflection scolds him for giving up before it is eaten by the pike. Egor returned to the castle crueller and would execute anyone who questioned his ideas. It later led to paranoia of being overthrown, despite ruling successfully for two years, so Egor went back to Alter for a confidence boost. His reflection had gone and the water was rippling. He could not recognise his face but then a giant pike jumped out and ate him whole. When news reached the Black Knight was dead, the newly released government appointed a woman named Gertrude as queen, despite many people wanting the pike that killed Egor to be king instead. However, Queen Gertrude allowed the pike to live in the Royal Goldfish Pond for the rest of its long life.

Herbert Hinkley frequently occupies the television in the family living room: he sits in his armchair all day, eating crisps and channel surfing, and never left the television's side. One night, his parents allow him to sleep downstairs and a delighted Herbert celebrates with salt and vinegar-flavoured crisps instead of his usual cheese and onion. As he sleeps, lightning strikes the TV aerial connected to Herbert's television, turning it on. A tiny white dot on the screen grows until it made the room glow and sucked the sleeping Herbert inside. He woke up to his mother's face looking at him from the other side of the television but he was too small to be seen. He runs to a red light at the bottom of a dark corridor and opens the door after moving a hot, electric coil. Behind the door is a newsroom where newsreader Gayna Honeycombe is reporting his disappearance. Herbert runs towards her but she and the set disappears. An electric cable fell from the ceiling and acid started to ooze through the floor. Herbert escaped into another corridor which was full of doors. He opens a door and a little girl playing board games with a clown scares him off; another door led to a violent bar brawl scene from a western film that unexpectedly featured Sooty and Sweep hiding under a table, waiting for their programme to start. Herbert then becomes a hospital patient during an Australian soap opera and discovers that he is going to turn into a cheese and onion crisp if he never gets out of the television. He runs out of the hospital in a panic, hoping to look for a shower room—his fingers had already changed but showering in his clothes might slow the process down.

In his living room, Herbert's parents had given up searching for their son and had been channel surfing all morning. Herbert went from rushing into a burning building to running past Batman and Robin to featuring on a cooking show, where the TV chef stuffed him into the oven. Herbert's parents laughed so hard, they did not notice the television smoking, burning and then disintegrating into a pile of ash. When they stopped, Herbert's mother took out the vacuum cleaner and picked up the cheese and onion crisp on top of the ash. She placed it in a tupperware box and put it in the back of the fridge for Herbert to eat whenever he came back.

Many unspecified years ago, there was a seaside town called Saucy by Sea which had a reputation for being the home of the rudest children in the world, but this was quickly changing. A handsome, moustachioed barber arrived in the town and opened up his shop, offering free haircuts to numerous children that lived there. Not wanting to pass a free offer, the barber became popular with many parents, particularly the parents of children staying true to the town's stereotype. Any of the rude children that were sent there would leave the shop well-behaved. Despite their children's hair looking no different to when they left, the parents were still the barber's biggest fans.

At one Saucy school, there were two children named Tania Wilson and Perigrine, who were frequently tormenting their teachers with their refusal to cooperate and obey, and their irritating attempts to be the class clown. In one anecdote, Tania refuses to participate in P. E. in her underwear, which is mandatory in the school rules. When the P. E. teacher demands a reason, Tania claims she has a medical note from her mother, climbs onto a horse and sings "La!!" and the angry teacher sends her to the headmaster's office. She meets Peregrine there, who had been sent because he had made fun of a teacher in a rude parody of "Jingle Bells". The headmaster orders them inside, planning to scare them with his cane, but Peregrine and Tania chant fearlessly, which makes him collapse and call for matron, implying a sudden mental breakdown.

One day, the barber arrives for a school visit. The students in Peregrine and Tania's classes stand and chorus a "Good morning" as he enters, whereas Peregrine and Tania ignore him and jeer vulgarly, respectively. The barber smiles and tells the children that they must visit his shop tomorrow as he writes in a notebook. The next day, Tania and Peregrine step into the barbershop and look around as they wait for their haircuts. Tania notices that there are no mirrors and that the strange barber's chair looked more like a dentist's chair but Peregrine is at the till, opening one of the barber's jars of slugs to hold a slug over his mouth as if he was going to eat them. The barber walks in suddenly making Peregrine drop the jar and the slug in shock, almost choking as he swallowed. The jar smashes against the floor and the slugs slither around making noises that remind Tania of voices. The barber gathers the slugs and stuffs them in his apron pocket. He locks the front door, opens up his barber utensils, takes out a knife and licks it; the children are stunned into silence as the barber wiped off the blood trail from the blade. He ties a bib around Peregrine and straps him into the barber chair. "Open wide," he orders. Tania screams in shock and the barber explains that he is not actually a barber: he travels around to different towns to stop rude children's misbehaviour by cutting off parts of their tongues and washing out their mouths thoroughly until they are not rude anymore.

Tania and Peregrine returned to school the next day with shorter tongues and politer attitudes. Meanwhile, the barbershop in the high street had closed and the barber had left town to find more business. He was never seen again.

One morning, a man wakes up irritated because a chip grew out of his shoulder.

Hugh was a giant who lived in a countryside cottage with his wife in Wales. He had messy black hair, and a warty face and tongue, which gave him a large lisp that sprayed everything he faced. His wife tried her best to cater to his bullying demands but one day, Hugh had grown until he could not fit in their home. He stomped next door and threatened Mr Sparrow, implying a promise to almost drown him and his family with the speech impediment. The Sparrow family rushed out of their house as fast as they could through the giant spittle and Hugh immediately moved in, throwing out the furniture and sleeping downstairs. By the next morning, his limbs were sticking out of the windows and his head had pulled the roof off the building; he had grown again. "I NEED MORE SPACE!" he yells; the spittle rained for fifteen seconds over a nearby village. After eating a forest, Hugh approaches a church and scares off the vicar and praying villagers inside with his lisping. Luckily, the church was warm and big enough for Hugh to sleep in overnight but he woke up cold and higher than the lowest clouds. He stomped across the border to London and ate pigeons from Trafalgar Square and drank from the River Thames. His lisping rained across the British Isles as he crossed to other English cities to find space. Hugh was so tall, the President of the United States telephoned him and warned that the United States Armed Forces would not hesitate to attack if he attempts to cross the Atlantic Ocean, so Hugh steps across and eats the entire American military.

"I NEED MORE SPACE!" Hugh yelled, his lisp raining on Africa for six hours. Eventually, he went to sleep with his feet in Australia, his bottom in India and his head on the Arctic, but he woke up bigger than the Solar System and the Milky Way. A satellite floats around his nose and asks him not to speak anymore because he would drown the Earth. Hugh grabs it and stuffs it in his mouth. The antenna poked a tongue wart, which "popped" Hugh like a balloon. He floats back to Earth and lands in a rainy grassland at 5 centimetres (2.0 in) tall, smaller than the blades. He demands that a snail hands over its home but the snail refuses and runs him over.

Five-year-old Jack is bored and restless. He wanted his mother to read him a bedtime story but she is too busy with a magazine crossword puzzle. After he annoys her to get her attention, his mother tells him to get a book from upstairs but Jack refuses, fidgeting around her. His mother orders him to go and puts him outside of the room; Jack had a fear of the dark and his imagination turned spooky: silhouettes of moths in the street lamp lights reminded him of bats and the staircase handrail looked like a ribcage. He began to wonder whether the bogeyman was actually more plausible than he originally thought as he tried the stairs. He hears a low rumble and a creak, and runs as fast as he can to his parents' bedroom, slamming the door behind him in case a troll was trying to chase him. He soon rushes back onto the landing when he mistakes a flowing curtain as a ghost. The bogeyman's domain was the bathroom, which was next to the other staircase that led to his bedroom on the second floor. Jack crawled past the door so that the bogeyman could not spot him through the keyhole and tried to ignore the dripping sound inside (the bogeyman was notoriously gooey). When he got up to the second landing, he remembered the fire monster, who loved to torment him every night by whimpering and scratching the door. He sees it lying outside his bedroom and jumps at it, grabbing the cat by its fur; the panicked cat frees from his grip and runs away. Jack returns to the living room as fast as he could with the bedtime story in hand. His mother scoffs that she knew he was overreacting and takes the copy of Dracula as he squeezes himself next to her.

The story begins with a history lesson about the rubbish bin. Before its invention, the streets were filthy and rats of all sizes were everywhere, attacking babies and eating the rubbish. Trousers were barely worn in favour of tights so that rats could not crawl up people's legs. Mr Dustbin decided to clean the streets with several buckets and dumping the mess in a place where the rats would not find it, which caused them to go extinct and the streets to become cleaner. Despite Mr Dustbin dying as a successful and revered inventor, people found no need for his work anymore, now that the rats would never trouble them again, but because of this, the streets' litter piles became mountains and no amount of dumping into the seas could slow it down. It was now a national emergency and was the fault of one person: a morbidly obese girl named Bunty Porker, who ate almost every hour and threw her containers and other used packets across her neighbourhood and town, creating a litter mountain the size of two mountains. The UK smelt terrible and attracted insects from all over the world, from bloodsuckers to disease-spreaders. The Queen telephones the Prime Minister and demands that he fixes the issue, so Parliament decides that Bunty should be captured by the army, led by Colonel Buffy.

At midnight, Bunty sneaked out of her house to climb the mountain and dump her rubbish wherever she could find a spot. The army ambush her with nets and sticks, and surround her tightly as Colonel Buffy announces that they had come to arrest her. Bunty refuses politely and swings her arms like a propeller, slapping all the soldiers away, and continues climbing the mountain. When she gets to the top, she spots a wire under her foot. It was moving. Bunty realises that it resembled a feeler that she discovered was attached to a giant European black bug which was hiding underneath her. It burst out of the top, snapping its pincers and ate Bunty and the mountain within seconds. Once the bugs had eaten all the litter, they left the UK to find more food, but everyone had learnt their lesson. The bin became a popular household item again.

Whenever Joesph Alexander finishes reading a book, he tears out its pages and throws them out of a nearby window, irritating his parents. One evening, his parents are shocked and furious to discover that he had destroyed every book in the house and ground him in the attic. Joesph did not understand the issue: every time he had thrown the loose pages out of the window, he assumed that they would plant themselves in the ground and grow into new books. The attic was dark, draughty and messy; an outside barn owl kept screeching. Joesph stayed awake, thinking about a plan to escape. He rushed to a trunk and opened it, discovering the large, black book that weighed the trunk down. Joesph took the book and looked through it: the front cover had an eagle sitting on a mountain and inside was full of illustrations of shapeshifting and devil-worshipping goblins and symbols; Joesph assumes it is a book of spells.

After reading, Joseph pushes the trunk to the window for leverage. He throws the ripped pages of the "spellbook" out of the window into the night sky. The pages float towards the mountain adjacent to Joesph's house and explode into flames on impact, turning into fleeing crows. The front cover in Joesph's hands grew hot and the eagle's eyes glowed red, so Joseph threw it out of the window as well, hitting the tree and setting it on fire. Joseph's mother bursts into the attic just as Joseph is kidnapped by a giant eagle; she is blown over by a gust of wind before she knew what was happening. The eagle flies Joesph around the mountain and drops him on a tree where he hears a voice loudly whisper "Beware!" He realises that he was now on a ledge next to a giant, smelly cave. A goblin appears and slams a metal leash around his neck, and drags him inside towards a courtroom. Jeering goblins in seats and crows in the ceiling watch on as Joesph is pulled in front of a goblin judge. He is charged with destroying the secret, ancient book The Great Book of Tharg (implied to be a book that was thought to have been missing for years). Joesph continues to demand a trial as the goblins in the audience throw out execution suggestions. The judge explains that there is no need for a trial because Joesph had torn too many books up to be innocent and orders him to be planted. Years from now, he would grow into a tree and be cut down to make paper.

Joesph's mother opens the attic door and asks why he is screaming. Joesph realises he is back home and must have had a nightmare. He jumps into his mother's arms and promises that he will never vandalise another book and she forgives him, taking him back to his room. A giant eagle feather on the floor is picked up by a gust of wind and floats out of the window towards the mountain.

Every time Thomas Rachet visits a shop with his mother, he causes embarrassment because he wants sweets. One afternoon, his vandalisms and pranks had he and his mother escorted out of every shop they visited: in the supermarket, he ate from the aisles, spilt yoghurt, raced around on a shopping trolley, pickpocketed from customers, and climbed shelves; in the chemist's, he played with toothpaste, wrote with suncream and fed unwrapped lollipops to a baby; in the bakery, he stuffed a doughnut into a charity box; in the butcher's, he threw eggs; in the newsagents, he started arguments with staff over a comic book; and tripped over an elderly man in the bank's service queue. Despite becoming a high street pariah, Thomas still demanded sweets as his mother weakly tried to punish him. Thomas yells that he hates her and runs away until he could not hear her voice calling after him.

He stops in an alleyway with a cobblestone road. It led to an empty street full of tall buildings and an old-fashioned sweet shop. Thomas knocks on the sweet shop door for a while until an old man answers and allows him inside. The shop did not remind Thomas of a sweet shop and was filthy, full of mannequins, and smelt of cats. The old man locks the door and says that he is going to get Thomas' favourites: lemon sherberts, liquorice twisters and rock candy. Slightly suspicious, Thomas points out that the old man knows everything about him, even his name, and the man confirms all assumptions as he reaches for a net, adding that he knows about Thomas' shop misbehaviours. Thomas admits that he only acts that way because he only wanted sweets. The old man touches a switch on the wall and mechanical sounds are heard from another room as he beckons Thomas to follow him. Thomas adds that he hates going shopping with his mother but the old man replies that he will get used to it soon, and catches him in the net.

When Thomas regains consciousness, he discovers that he had been turned into a Papier-mâché statue. His body is passed around shops as he waits for his mother to find him. That is if she remembers to look for him.

To celebrate Benjamin's birth, an uncle buys him a top hat, so his mother put it in a cupboard for when he was old enough. However, once he could walk, Benjamin sneaked into his parents' bedroom and his mother found him wearing it on a pile of ransacked clothes. Ever since, Benjamin took his uncle's present everywhere, using it as both a hat and a toy. His father gave him the nickname "Bunny" because rabbits were pulled out of top hats by magicians. When it eventually broke apart from its age, Benjamin became depressed and barely left his bedroom. As his sixth birthday drew closer, Benjamin hoped he would get a replacement.

On his sixth birthday, Benjamin wakes up and approached his parents. Mother and father look desperately at each other until his father sheepishly explains that there were no top hats in any of the shops he went to. Benjamin throws a tantrum and locks himself back in his bedroom, and stays in there until his parents beg him at the door to come out and meet his birthday party guests. Benjamin obeys, but with an intention to sabotage if he cannot find a top hat. Unfortunately, none of the guests had considered a top hat for a present so Benjamin sabotages party games, destroys his top hat birthday cake and attempts to gate-crash the party magician's act, but his mother forces him to be Marvelous Marvin's volunteer. The six-year-old magician's assistant appears from a box wearing a top hat. Benjamin demands he hands the hat over, ignoring the magician's insistence that it is not for sale. Benjamin snatches the hat and runs to his bedroom, with his parents, the magician and the assistant chasing him.

He locks his door and tries the hat on in front of the mirror. It wriggles. He takes it off and tips out a rabbit, that runs away to hide under his bed. Benjamin realises that the hat can grant wishes and he wishes for a racing bike, and other gifts that he never got. On the other side of his door, Marvin warns Benjamin's parents that the hat had been in his family for generations and can make situations go horribly awry if in the wrong hands. Eventually, the group break the door off the hinges, landing on top of each other in a pile. Knowing how much trouble he was in now, Benjamin wishes that he "wasn't here". The hat launches itself across the room and a giant hand grows out of it, reaching towards Benjamin. He screams as it grabs him by the neck of his shirt and drags him inside. He was never seen again. Marvin would later attempt many times to conjure Benjamin back but Benjamin had used up all of the magic; if Marvin ever listened closely, he could hear the faint sound of Benjamin's voice begging for forgiveness.

Amos Stirling is a stupid man who is desperate to become famous. He realises that if he had a famous child, he would become a famous father. He advertises a proposal in the national newspaper and marries a lonely woman from a northern Scottish island named Betty, who soon gives birth to a daughter. Amos insists on naming her after Albert Einstein, despite Betty's annoyance, but the daughter is named Albert regardless. Her bedroom is redecorated with a variety of textbooks and chemistry equipment, and her father had made himself her tutor; Betty's protests are ignored by her husband whenever she argues that Albert cannot read or talk yet, and Amos even installed steel window shutters so that nothing outside Albert's bedroom could distract from lessons. One night, a hook-nosed figure wearing a hooded cloak and carrying a silk sack appears in Albert's bedroom, waking her up. The figure says that he had been sent by Amos and introduces himself as The Childhood Snatcher, then plucks a hair strand out of Albert's hair, drops it in the sack, and floated out of the window as dust.

By two-years-old, Albert could talk, walk and had the education skills of a high school student. As Betty's concerns continued to be ignored, Amos continued pushing his daughter to success by increasing her curriculum. Unfortunately for Betty, Amos' desire for nepotism damaged Albert's relationships with other toddlers her age because they were still wearing nappies and were only interested in "childish" games, whereas she only had interests in everything Amos had exposed her to and could speak four languages and was preparing for her fifth. The Childhood Snatcher returned every night before her birthdays to take a strand from her head. By the eve of Albert's third birthday, she had already graduated from university, became Prime Minister and moved in to 10 Downing Street. The Childhood Snatcher reappears and Albert wakes up, assuming that Amos had sent for him again. The Snatcher pulls off his hood, revealing the grotesque face of an old man, and explains that he wants her youth, and takes his fourth hair. It was too late when Amos and Betty burst into the room: The Snatcher had disappeared and their daughter had become an old woman. Betty jumps at her husband, screaming that she had been right all along. Amos lets her rant as he looks at the ground in embarrassment.

The original front cover was illustrated by Bobbie Spargo, who was also the illustrator.[1] After the cartoon series aired on CITV, the covers were re-designed by Honeycomb Animation, the producers of the cartoon,[19] which was published in January 2000.

The book is said to have officially gone out of print in 2009.[1] It was briefly available on Kindle in 2011, published by Orion.[20]

"The Barber of Civil" (along with Fearsome Tales for Fiendish Kids' "Death By Chocolate") was republished in 1998 by Macmillan Children's Books as part of the short story collection Scary Stories for Eight Year Olds by Helen Paiba.[36]