In this collection of very short stories, none of the stories is more than two pages long, and some are much shorter. There are stories about ghosts, supermarkets, animals, adventures, and all kinds of things. Kevin Crossley-Holland is an established writer who has produced a number of books for OUP, and this is a short and sharp collection of funny, intriguing, and scary stories.

In this collection of very short stories, none of the stories is more than two pages long, and some are much shorter. There are stories about ghosts, supermarkets, animals, adventures, and all kinds of things. Kevin Crossley-Holland is an established writer, who has produced a number of books for OUP, and this is a short and sharp collection of funny, intriguing, and scary stories.

2008-06-10 Second Rate

There has always been something rather second rate about Kevin Crossley-Holland; if he has mastered anything it's picking at the off-cuts of other people's work and making them his own and I think that this collection demonstrates this clearly.
The traditional stories that are in this collection have all been done better elsewhere and the ones taht seem to be Crossley-Holland's own all seem imbued with something rather mean-spirited; tales full of children coming to harm or being threatened.
He even has a go at being "street" and getting down with the kids - "Hey, respect, lion!" But it doesn't work: it just sounds like some elderly white bloke trying to be current.
The writer's biography calls him a "master story-teller": that, for me, is just not true. His Arthur trilogy seems like a thin idea stretched even thinner - where's the plot, KCH?! - and this collection is the same thing, but in reverse: "I'll fob them off with some abbreviated bilge, it'll get me a few more school bookings where I can pontificate about being Welsh, talk down to them and then leave, quids in." (I speak from experience - I've heard him. There was something rather Daily Mail about him, as if all us should have been gratified that he deigned to slum it at a comprehensive for once).
So, no, don't buy this one. Dig a bit further and find a collection touched by more warmth, more humour