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Product Description
When both of Eddie Dickens' parents catch a disease that makes them turn yellow, go a bit crinkly round the edges and smell of hot water bottles, it's agreed he should go and stay with relatives at their house Awful End. Unfortunately for Eddie, those relatives are Mad Uncle Jack and Even-Madder Aunt Maud, and it doesn't look as if the three of them are ever going to reach their destination...Set in a 19th-century world of blotchy skin, runaway orphans, and a stuffed stoat called Malcolm, this wonderfully ridiculous adventure story was Philip Ardagh's first full-length work of fiction and provides pure entertainment for children aged 8-80. This title is also available on Faber Penguin Audiobooks.
Amazon.com Review
"When Eddie Dickens was eleven years old, both his parents caught some awful disease that made them turn yellow, go a bit crinkly around the edges, and smell of old hot water bottles." So begins author Philip Ardagh's silly story of an ill-fated boy who, due to his parents' jaundiced condition, is forced to take part in a quest so preposterous that it could only conclude at A House Called Awful End. Set in England, back in the days when "postage stamps were a pretty new idea," Eddie finds himself put in the dubious care of his Mad Uncle Jack and Mad Aunt Maud, who not only assault him with a stuffed stoat and make him sleep in his trunk, but carelessly turn him over to the St. Horrid's Home for Grateful Orphans. There, he stages a breakout, smuggles himself and the other orphans out in the belly of a cow parade float, and is miraculously reunited with his newly recovered parents. And if you're thinking that this plot is utter nonsense, you're absolutely right. Ardagh originally wrote the ridiculous farce as a series of letters to entertain his nephew in boarding school and thought it may charm others as well. While adult readers may scratch their heads in bewilderment as they try to follow this riotously rambling narrative, children have long been aficionados of the absurd, and Awful End will no doubt appeal hugely to those fans of Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events and Neil Gaiman's wonderfully weird Coraline. Book one in a proposed trilogy. (Ages 9 to 12) --Jennifer Hubert
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