Fearsome Tales for Fiendish Kids is a 1996 children's black comedy horror book written by British author Jamie Rix. It is the third book in the Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids series. It was published by Hodder Children's Books and was the last in the series to be published before the CITV cartoon adaptation, containing 16 short stories—one story more than the previous two books.
Synopsis
The Cat Burglar
Fedora Funklefink is a notorious con artist who uses any way she can to avoid responsibilities or get rich quick. She forces girls to pay to use the girls' toilets, forges her mother's handwriting so that she could sit out of P. E. lessons, makes other schoolchildren pay to lick her mints, refuses to let her father use his car until he paid her for cleaning the windscreen, and uses mirrors in exams to cheat. On the way to plan her next get-rich-quick scheme, she spots a poster for a missing cat, offering a £10 reward. She rips the poster off, runs home, changes into a "hunting" costume, and kidnaps a black stray behind her garden. The mother of the missing cat's owner answers the front door when Funklefink goes to deliver but her daughter, Angela Tearful, runs out past her mother, excited about reuniting with her cat, and sobs when she sees the black stray. Believing Tearful to be insane, Funklefink sneaks away with the cat to try something else.
The black stray is given a makeover with paints, boot polish and anything Funklefink can find until it matched the description on the poster. However, Tearful and her mother are not convinced, possibly because the "makeup" was dripping and Funklefink's clothes were covered in it. The next day, she returns with a white Persian cat but she is denied money. Then Funklefink returned with a dog, then a tennis racket, and then a pepperoni pizza, but Tearful's mother yells "NO!" and slams the door every time. Funklefink finally leaves, officially out of ideas and reluctantly decides to abandon the plan. Suddenly, a cat jumps out of a bush and is ran over by a car. It had white paws, a black tail, a marmalade body, and a diamond shape in its forehead. Funklefink realizes it is Tearful's missing cat and takes her home to look alive with a bicycle pump. "Not you again," groans Tearful's mother when she sees Funklefink outside her the front door. Funklefink shows off the dead cat and uses it as a ventriloquist's dummy to convince the family to hand her £20. Tearful decides to give Funklefink a £50 note and takes the cat in for a bath.
Funklefink ran off to laugh maniacally about scamming yet another group of people and sees another poster for a missing cat on the same tree she found the previous with a reward of £5000. Funklefink salivates thinking about how she would spend £5000 and hears purring behind her. She turns gleefully to find a circus tiger, which eats her whole. The circus owner later finds the tiger asleep from a stomach ache.
Mr. Peeler's Butterflies
Alexander uses numerous tactics to stay awake past his 7:30pm bedtime by pestering his exhausted parents, such as taking time to put on a swimming costume, pretending to be interested in minute details of keeping his bedroom protected from creepy shadows, forcing his mother to search for toys downstairs that he knowingly had in his room, and asking for water a few minutes later so that he could pretend to use the toilet. His parents (particularly his father) become angrier by the second, but Alexander does not break his naivety ploy.
By four o'clock, Alexander is asleep. His window latch creaks open and a sardine smell fills the bedroom. He wakes up terrified and calls for his parents. His father rushes in angrily and checks the window—it was closed—but only his mother admits she can smell the sardine, despite his father finding a sardine tin. Alexander denies throwing it there for a prank. "Who did? Mr Peeler?" shouts his father, and then explains to his confused wife that Peeler was a character from a nursery rhyme he remembers from childhood. He leaves the room, followed by his wife, demanding that Alexander never bothers them again for the rest of the night.