No longer having a nine-year-old readily at hand, we here at the Family Valued executive laundromat, test kitchen, and family pressroom have randomly selected a ten-year-old from among the one immediately available.

So, what have you been reading lately?
Horrible Histories and Horrible Science.

What is that?
Horrible Science is about icky science stuff. And Horrible Histories is about different people and their history which is icky. It’s only the icky bits. They might offend some people.

So there’s no non-icky history?
There’s timelines which tell what icky stuff was going on- that’s kind of real history.

I notice that’s quite a pile of books beside you.
There’s lots of them: The Rotten Romans; The Terrible Tudors; The Cutthroat Celts: and Dark Knights and Dingy Castles. That’s only some of them. In the Groovy Greeks, they had some pretty icky beliefs. If you went onto a certain path with a dog or a cat, then something bad would happen. The Greeks are one of my favorite people out of the ancient world. In the WW I book, there were lots and lots of lice on the soldiers. It was pretty gross.

The books have a lot of illustrations, I notice.
They have silly little pictures and a little comic in the beginning of each Horrible Histories. The pictures are kind of sick humor and silly pictures and stuff. There’s also an activity book. I did not know about these when I read my first Horrible Histories book.

Would you recommend the books?
Yes, they’re very good. People who are interested in history, or social studies in my case, will like them. And if they like humor- history humor.

January, 2006