Read Garbage Pail Kids 2 – Thrills and Chills free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
R. L. Stine's Garbage Pail Kids Thrills and Chills is a gross-out comedy for 8 year olds about ten children, one hippo and a pet show they have no chance of winning.
It's the second book about the Garbage Pail Kids. They all live together in a big tumbledown house in a town called Smellville, with no parents, no memory of how they got there and absolutely no interest in the washing up.
Things kick off when Rob Slob brings home a hippopotamus. He thinks it's a pig. It followed him, so obviously he's keeping it.
Then the neighbours arrive. Peter and Patty Perfect turn up in matching shirts with I'M PERFECT printed on the front, holding their chihuahua, Good Boy, who they would like everyone to watch. He does a cartwheel. He does a backward cartwheel. He writes the alphabet blindfolded.
They've come round for one reason, which is to explain that nobody else should bother entering the Smellville Pet Show, because the prize is a day at an amusement park and the Perfects are going to win it.
Meanwhile our lot's dog, Pooper, has been asleep since Tuesday.
The jokes come at you about one a paragraph and most of them are disgusting. Insects drop out of Rob Slob's hair when he scratches it. Junkfood John eats somebody's bug collection thinking they're salty raisins. There's a parrot who knows one joke and will not let it go (Pete and Repeat were in a boat, and yes, it goes on for a page).
The narrator changes every few chapters, which is a nice touch. Adam Bomb starts, then Handy Sandy takes over, then Nervous Rex, and each of them clearly believes they're the sensible one in the house.
Fair warning on the humour. It really is very rude, and there's an exchange where one child accuses another of fat-shaming a hippo that lands a bit oddly. Nothing scary, though, despite whose name is on the cover.
If you've got a reader who giggles at anything involving smells, this is exactly their sort of thing. If they like their funny books a bit gentler, it'll be a lot.
Better still, start them at Welcome to Smellville, which is also in the library. That's where this lot and the Perfect twins first get going, at a school science fair, with a conveyor belt and a borrowed cat.
A library hand-picked by an English teacher, delivered through a calm, ad-free app. If your child already loves reading, we keep up.
7-day free trial. Then £7.99/month.
