The Strange Tales of the Alphabet Children
"A gruesome and whimsical collection of rhyming cautionary tales for precocious children and weary adults."
About this book
Introduction and inspiration
The Strange Tales of the Alphabet Children is a collection of 26 modern-day cautionary tales, each documenting in rhyming couplets the sad demise (or grisly injuries if not actual death) of children who all foolishly ignore their parents’ sage advice.
The book was initially inspired by Edward Gorey’s ‘Gashleycrumb Tinies’, a dark and macabre illustrated ‘ABC’ or abecedarian published in 1963. Gorey’s short work begins with Amy who fell down the stairs and ends with Zilla who drank too much gin, but beyond each child’s first name and how they met their untimely end, little is known about the circumstances that led up to the tragedy that befell them.
As a long-term fan of Gorey, Belloc, Dahl and the Brothers Grimm, I decided to write the backstory for each unfortunate child, choosing themes and situations that would speak to today’s audience, while retaining the somewhat gruesome and comically shocking style of the erstwhile cautionary tale.
In terms of a target audience, this is not a children’s book in the traditional sense. Stories involving suffocation, poisoning, mauling and road traffic accidents do not happily fall within the fluffy rabbit / affable giant genre. For that reason, the Alphabet Children is aimed at the world-wise older child, who loves words, delights in darker, daring humour, and doesn’t want to be mollycoddled or spoken down to. It is also aimed at their long-suffering and slightly cynical parents, who may use the Alphabet Children as a way to subliminally impart some parental wisdom!
Read or listen to Olive Tippleswitch.
About The Author
A potted history
I was born in 1973 and grew up in Gretton, a smallish village in north Northamptonshire set in the midst of rolling countryside.
As the youngest of four by a sizeable margin, I was generally left to my own devices. From memory, I spent much of the time roaming the countryside, drawing, playing computer games or making Airfix kits. I was also an avid reader, many of my books having been inherited from my older brothers and sisters. As a result, my choice of fiction was often rooted in the 1950s and 60s.
My wider love of English was almost certainly the result of my parents’ influence. Dad helped me to appreciate the artistry of well-crafted prose and taught me the basics of storytelling. My Mum, who was rarely without a book by her side, introduced me to poetry and the spoken word. I didn’t share their passion for acting, but I did manage to win some verse recital competitions at the Oundle Festival of Music and Drama under Mum’s tutelage.
At school, I was fortunate to have some inspirational English teachers who honed my writing skills and developed my love of literature beyond children’s fiction. Then, after the panic-inducing blur of GCSE’s and A-levels, I went on to study history at the University of Durham - a glorious three years of doing not very much beyond socialising and generally growing up.
Post-Durham came an aimless ‘year out’ back home, much of it spent worrying about the blank sheet of adulthood stretching before me. A friend suggested that ‘the law’ might suit me, and so, desperate for a well-mapped career path, I sent off a sheaf of application forms for a training contract. To my surprise, one application proved successful, and within weeks of being accepted, I was off to London to study law.
Law was a career that I convinced myself I might enjoy (money, independence, glamour), but ended up despising (drudgery, spiritual death, anxiety, debt). I did write a number of legal articles, one of which (to my eternal surprise) was published in The Times, but the subject matter was hardly exciting.
To offset the alternating tedium and stress of being a trainee solicitor, I started a mini-business with a good friend importing classic cars from California. Quite how we pulled it off remains a mystery, but our weekend trips to San Francisco were a high point in an otherwise unrewarding career.
Parting company with the legal profession a few years after qualifying, I side-stepped into management consultancy, which was much more fun. From there, I joined News International to become their head of Internal Communications. It was a role I knew nothing about, but which seemed to involve a lot of writing and a bit of law, not to mention the occasional need for graphic design and video production, which helped sate my need for creativity.
Just as the phone hacking scandal broke, I left to set up my own specialist internal communication consultancy in 2009, which is still keeping me busy today.
When not sitting in front of a screen or wrangling my children through life's challenges, I can usually be found wandering the fields, taking photographs or undertaking some sort of up-cycling project.