Horrid Henry’s Jolly Joke Books

Description

Horrid Henry’s friends and enemies all think his first joke book was such a great idea that they want to write one, too!

Themed sections from each of Henry’s classmates and some of his teachers include Ralph’s Rude Jokes, Gurinder’s Gorgeous Jokes, Weepy William’s ‘Wah Nobody Laughed at My Jokes’ Jokes, Boudica’s Battle Jokes and Fangmangler Jokes. Of course Henry’s determined to have the last word with the funniest and grossest jokes of all.

Authors Biography

Francesca Simon spent her childhood on the beach in California and started writing stories at the age of eight. She wrote her first Horrid Henry book in 1994. Horrid Henry has gone on to conquer the globe; his adventures are published in 27 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide.

Francesca has won the Children’s Book of the Year Award and been a judge for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Roald Dahl Funny Prize. In 2009, in one of the proudest moments of her career, Francesca was awarded a Gold Blue Peter badge.

Francesca is also a passionate ambassador for children’s literacy and is a trustee of the World Book Day charity. She lives in North London with her family.

Tony Ross was born in 1938 in Wandsworth, South London. During World War II, the Ross family moved to Cheshire, and Tony ended up at the Liverpool Regional College of Art, having abandoned his initial dream of working with horses. He had dreamed of being a cowboy, a jockey, a mounted policeman – anything in fact involving horses! At the age of seventeen, he wrote to John Wayne, offering to make his own way over to the United States if he could just play a part in a western. There was, regrettably, no reply. Tony reckons, however, that it is the Wayne-syndrome, the dazzle of the stage (his father was a conjuror, and his uncles film extras) which makes him love to put on an act in his talking-and-drawing sessions with groups of children.

Tony went into teaching after a bad day in the advertising agency where he was art director. At first he taught in all sorts of areas – design, typography, advertising. At that time he was drawing cartoons for magazines like Punch. Tony had seven tiny books accepted by Fabri, the first publisher he approached, so he “never had that baptism by fire of trudging stuff round the streets“. Today, Tony’s work is recognised in dozens of countries and he has won many awards.

Tony lives in Macclesfield, Cheshire, with his wife Zoe, who is also his very competent business partner. She reads his contracts, and manages the business side, allowing Tony to sit in his studio and do yet more wonderful drawings. Tony likes to experiment in art and search for new frontiers. “I’m free to do what I like: as a designer and typographer I can control and design and divide my own page. I like the form of the book to do things, the covers and endpapers to add point, make the reader puzzle and be excited.” He also loves fairy tales as subject matter. “Apart from the fact that they present a ready-made idea, they come out of the past, they’re part of history, and I love history in its simplest, broadest sense. I’m interested in their universal quality – Red Riding Hood, for instance, exists in 300 versions, and was a simple way, in the days when towns were small places surrounded by forests, of telling little girls it was dangerous to go into those forests.” But he does sometimes change the moral. “A Dutch publisher complained to me that The Boy Who Cried Wolf has evil triumphing when the wolf eats everyone. But the boy is a little liar, and the adults indulged in the worst kind of finger-wagging, whereas the wolf is a clean, tidy, honest, wolf-like wolf – there is an essential goodness regardless of outer form.”

Tony has illustrated many successful titles with Collins Children’s Books, including Harry the Poisonous Centipede by Lynne Reid Banks, and the Little Wolf series by Ian Whybrow. His wonderful Little Princess books – I Want A Sister, I Want My Dinner, I Want My Potty and I Don’t Want To Go To Hospital – were all reissued in paperback by Collins in August 2001, and I Want My Dummy in March 2002.