My mum still has loads of my old childhood books. Well, not as many as I would like as she did send a huge box off to a charity shop when I was in halls of residence. Having observed my reaction to this deep betrayal on my return to the family bosom, she spent a good few hours re-purchasing what hadn’t yet been sold from Sue Ryder (it was a win-win for Sue). This turned out to be very prudent move as lots of the books she rescued are now out of print and cost fortunes on Amazon! I was thinking about replacing my slightly dogeared copy of The Worst Person in the World, which my daughters now love, but have just discovered that I will have to pay £89.54 if I want a new one or £19.44 for a second hand copy!!! I started to look up a few other childhood favourites and most of these are crazily expensive too. What do these books have in common? They are all slightly odd, deeply loved and obviously inspire the kind of devotion that warrants a £90 price tag. I’m going to be digging through a lot more second hand book shops and jumble sales from now on…
The story of a cantankerous recluse who lives in a terrible mess and eats sour lemons for breakfast, which he finds too sweet. Fortunately a warty beast called Ugly and an old party hat help him to change his ways.
Simp is an ugly puppy who gets dumped in the dump! The story follows him on his perilous journey to finding a new owner and a brilliant new job. This one makes me go a bit misty. Sniff!
This book is pretty weird. A rat-catcher happens to live upstairs from a family of 14 rats. A family of rats happen to live underneath a rat-catcher. All sorts of valuable lessons about compromise and perception proceed.
The weirdest book of them all. This was actually my brother’s book and it freaked me OUT as a child. Basically some children abuse slugs and then they end up getting turned inside out and eaten by the slugs (I think). There’s an illustration of a child burping up a slug which is particularly foul. Such is the mesmeric power of this book that my brother and his best friend have a gag where they give it to each other wrapped as a Christmas present on alternate years. I am going to put a stop to this now that I know it sells for over £100 on Amazon…
