Moody Margaret Strikes Back

Horrid Henry's Joke Books

by Francesca Simon

Moody Margaret and the Secret Club strike back! With their most ingenious dares and hilarious jokes, it's time for the girls to get their own back on Henry and his friends. But Henry isn't about to let anyone get the better of him, resulting in a hilariously horrid showdown! Filled with witty comments and acerbic asides from Henry and Margaret's friends, enemies, families and teachers, along with brand new Tony Ross illustrations, this book should keep Henry's (and Margaret's!) fans mischievously quiet.

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Francesca Simon grew up in California and attended both Yale and Oxford Universities, where she specialised in Medieval Studies. How this prepared her to write children’s books she cannot imagine, but it did give her a thorough grounding in alliteration.

She then threw away a lucrative career as a medievalist and worked as a freelance journalist, writing for the Sunday Times, Guardian, Mail on Sunday, Telegraph, and Vogue (US). After her son Joshua was born in 1989, she started writing children’s books full time. One of the UK’s best-selling children’s writers, Francesca has published over 50 books, including the immensely popular HORRID HENRY series, which has now sold over twelve million copies.

Francesca won the Children’s Book of the Year in 2008 at the British Book Awards for Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman. HORRID HENRY is published in 24 countries and is also an animated CITV series. She lives in London with her husband, son, and Tibetan Spaniel, Shanti.

Reviews

[alexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good jokes, riddles and dares for kids. Not anything great, doesn’t match the original Horrid Henry books and the storyline felt a bit empty.

[John Naylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book of jokes and dares set in the Horrid Henry universe.
There is very little I can say about this. It uses a lot of characters but does very little with them. I cannot rate it as anything but a reading experience. My experience was that this is inferior to the main Horrid Henry series.

[Nicol · Rating 3 out of 5]

it is a funny book .

[JV · Rating 3 out of 5]

This a funny book with a lot of jokes and dares. There are two teams in this book, the purple hand team and the secret club. I liked it.

[Tanvir Haque · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book suitable for Years 2-4 or children aged 6-9. Moody Margaret books are in the same series as Horrid Henry and contain many of the same characters. Margaret is more or less a female version of Horrid Henry and is just as unpleasant. In this instalment Moody Margaret recruits friends to join her posse, the ‘Secret Club’ which dislikes Horrid Henry’s rival gang, the ‘Purple Hand.’ She has lots of female friends but has trouble deciding which friend to pick as her second in command. Will it be Sour Susan, Clever Clare, Fiery Fiona, Gorgeous Gurinder or Singing Soraya? There is no dispute about Margaret being the boss though; that is a given in the book. The book basically bands about three types of humour: jokes, dares and tricks. The characters compete as to see who has the best jokes, dares and tricks.

I found this book to be particularly uninspiring reading. It didn’t really encourage me to learn much beyond some of the few good puns and play-on-words that do exist in the book. It does have some merit in that some of it is quite funny and naughty and will therefore enthuse and engage young readers. However, I can see pupils taking part in the tricks and doing them on each other in your classroom or at home or outside school and getting into trouble, or worse, into fights. Also, the rival gangs theme is not very encouraging of good behaviour and could maybe set a poor example to children depending on the class. Gangs and gang culture have been topical in education and society in recent years and the current coalition government (as at 2013) is eager to combat gang mentality. It’s not that bad a book and it did make me laugh a little. But it might cause some problems in your classroom.

[Shereil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a really nice fusion of story, jokes and dares which is really relevant to many children. Moody Margaret is a character often seen in many of the Horrid Henry books also by Francesca Simon so it was nice to have a book dedicated to her instead of Henry. In this book Moody Margaret has a special club that boasts the greatness of girls and desperately does not want Henry’s club to outdo her. It is a light hearted story about boy vs. Girls and since the book is focused and titled for Moody Margaret, her clubs ends up being the best at the end. The children really loved this book because it was funny and included many of the familiar characters from the Horrid Henry stories. It was also good the way in which it is written offering specific reading parts for the characters. This makes it great to read with children, almost like a little play script. Again like many of this range by Francesca Simon it can seem a little risky when informing children about jokes and dares that could potentially hurt another child’s feelings if they then go and apply it. However, the stories are so widely know by now it is most likely that children are able to separate their behaviour from what is read in these books.

[Ursula · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh I loved Moody Margret, she and Henry were my favourite characters

[Vince Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

a witty battle between a group of girls and boys