Groosham Grange [Hardcover]

Anthony Horowitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 14, 2008 | Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

From Anthony Horowitz, a Groosham . . . make that gruesome . . . new adventure!

Sent to Groosham Grange as a last resort by his frustrated parents, thirteen-year-old David Eliot quickly discovers that his new boarding school is very peculiar. New pupils are made to sign their names in blood . . . the French teacher cancels classes on days there’s a full moon . . . there are chilling secrets hidden in the assistant headmaster’s office. What’s the meaning of the black rings everyone wears? Where do the other pupils vanish to at night? Suddenly, his biggest problem isn’t staying in school—it’s getting out alive.

For Anthony Horowitz’s legion of fans, this fun thriller is a must have.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4–6—This dark, sinister tale, which reads like a cross between Lemony Snicket's books (HarperCollins) and R. L. Stine's "Goosebumps" series (Scholastic), involves maniacal parents, supernatural monsters, and some difficult choices for its characters. David Eliot's parents make the Dursleys from "Harry Potter" seem like a loving family. Not only are they mentally abusive, but they are also horrifyingly physically abusive (Mr. Eliot throws a knife at David and is nonplussed when it ends up in his wife's chest instead). After David is expelled from school, a mysterious letter arrives, offering him a place at a boarding school located on its own island off Norfolk, England. On the train trip to Groosham Grange, David meets a boy and girl who have also been sent away for not measuring up to standards. Once they arrive, they discover strange, otherworldly teachers and students who behave in a secretive manner, rising from their beds at midnight and disappearing without a trace. David and his friends must discover the secret of Groosham Grange before their 13th birthdays, when they will be forced to make a difficult decision that will change their lives forever. Though the author portrays punishments and moments of cruelty as absurd and unrealistic, these instances may disturb some readers. Still, the mysteries, elements of witchcraft and the supernatural, and occasional instances of humor may appeal to fans of (mostly) bloodless horror.—Debra Banna, Sharon Public Library, MA
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From Booklist

Horowitz takes a step away from his Alex Rider series to fashion a funny little spot of horror for a younger set of readers in this riff on the classic boarding-school tale. After David Elliot is expelled from a private school, he is invited to enroll in a mysterious boarding school called Groosham Grange. The school, a sort of bizarro Hogwarts, has a faculty of vampires, ghouls, and worse, and all the students have phony names, sport matching black-stone rings, and don’t seem to mind being taught by monsters. For the most part, David’s subsequent adventures and attempts to escape the school are more zany than scary, but there’s still plenty of yikes moments and eerie passages peppered among the silliness. The cartoonishly evil folks at Groosham make a fine point that as bad as they may seem, they’ve never dropped an atomic bomb on anyone, and are just the sort of “rather pleasantly evil” characters ideal to give kids a few goose bumps in between snickers. Grades 5-8. --Ian Chipman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Philomel (August 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399250611
• ISBN-13: 978-0399250613
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,374,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anthony Horowitz's life might have been copied from the pages of Charles Dickens or the Brothers Grimm. Born in 1956 in Stanmore, Middlesex, to a family of wealth and status, Anthony was raised by nannies, surrounded by servants and chauffeurs. His father, a wealthy businessman, was, says Mr. Horowitz, "a fixer for Harold Wilson." What that means exactly is unclear -- "My father was a very secretive man," he says-- so an aura of suspicion and mystery surrounds both the word and the man. As unlikely as it might seem, Anthony's father, threatened with bankruptcy, withdrew all of his money from Swiss bank accounts in Zurich and deposited it in another account under a false name and then promptly died. His mother searched unsuccessfully for years in attempt to find the money, but it was never found. That too shaped Anthony's view of things. Today he says, "I think the only thing to do with money is spend it." His mother, whom he adored, eccentrically gave him a human skull for his 13th birthday. His grandmother, another Dickensian character, was mean-spirited and malevolent, a destructive force in his life. She was, he says, "a truly evil person", his first and worst arch villain. "My sister and I danced on her grave when she died," he now recalls.
A miserably unhappy and overweight child, Anthony had nowhere to turn for solace. "Family meals," he recalls, "had calories running into the thousands&. I was an astoundingly large, round child&." At the age of eight he was sent off to boarding school, a standard practice of the times and class in which he was raised. While being away from home came as an enormous relief, the school itself, Orley Farm, was a grand guignol horror with a headmaster who flogged the boys till they bled. "Once the headmaster told me to stand up in assembly and in front of the whole school said, 'This boy is so stupid he will not be coming to Christmas games tomorrow.' I have never totally recovered." To relieve his misery and that of the other boys, he not unsurprisingly made up tales of astounding revenge and retribution.


Anthony Horowitz is perhaps the busiest writer in England. He has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. He writes in a comfortable shed in his garden for up to ten hours per day. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he has also written episodes of several popular TV crime series, including Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. He has written a television series Foyle's War, which recently aired in the United States, and he has written the libretto of a Broadway musical adapted from Dr. Seuss's book, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. His film script The Gathering has just finished production. And&oh yes&there are more Alex Rider novels in the works. Anthony has also written the Diamond Brothers series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before Harry Went to Hogwarts, David Went to Groosham Grange!, September 15, 2007

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Groosham Grange (Paperback)

Anthony Horowitz today is better known for his successful Alex Rider series (which have also been turned into movies) but back when I was a kid he wrote the best comedy thrillers and comedy horror junior paperbacks you could find. Groosham Grange first published back in 1988 is easily up there with the best of his career's work. I just reread it today and it is even better than I remembered it. You definitely don't have to still be a kid either to enjoy it.

I guess the closest comparison to this storyline would be the first book of the Harry Potter series although this is a lot less magicy and more kid monsters/horror. Obviously J.K. Rowling read this book as a kid herself before coming up with her successful series.

In Groosham Grange 12 year old David Eliot is expelled from school. His abusive father isn't too pleased, nor does his mother stick up for him either and goes along with his dad's evil plans usually while being the victim of domestic violence herself. When a letter addressed to his father seems to magically arrive just when he is thinking up punishment explaining that a school located on an island off the Norfolk (part of the UK) coastline is heavily into discipline and doesn't expect the parents to ever visit at all he decides to send David there.

On route to the school David meets two other new classmates, Jeffrey and Jill. They decide to stick together no matter what. What is however not anything they could have expected! From the train station they are driven in a hearse to a rusty boat which takes them to the island. There they made to sign onto the registry with their own blood, the teachers are weird, the history teacher is old, bald and wrapped in bandages. The French teacher disappears every full moon, the Latin teacher teaches in darkness by candlelight with the blinds closed because he doesn't like the sun and why does the headmaster's door's sign say The Heads? The food doesn't resemble any animal they used to eat and where do all the other students disappear to after midnight? Why does everyone keep mentioning how fortunate David is to be born the seventh son of a seventh son? These are just some of the weird things going on at Groosham Grange. David and Jill want to leave but you're never supposed to leave Groosham without graduating. The school even has its own cemetery!

Horowitz is a great author. Another book you absolutely must read is called Granny. It's the story of the evilest Granny on the planet who plans to attend the Golden Granny Awards where she can compete for awards such as making everyone at the post office wait for the longest amount of time, the longest time to get on bus, most difficult shopper, the most unnecessary visits to a doctor and many other awards. The evil grannies of the world also have a new invention that will make them young again, all they need is the enzymes of a young boy and what better boy to use than her own grandson!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Groosham Grange a review by Ryan Cole in Hull, December 13, 2004

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Groosham Grange (Hardcover)

Groosham Grange is a brill book, it is about a boy called David Eliot and he gets expelled from Beton College. He gets a letter from a school on the coast of Norway called Groosham Grange.He meets a girl called Jill and a boy called Jeffrey on a train to Norway.When they get to the train station they find a humpbacked person waiting to drive them to the school. When they
got there they found out that nothing was as they expected and far from normal. This is a book for people who like adventure and mystery books. Recommended for ages 7-13.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars THIN CHARACTERS, THIN PLOT, DISAPPOINTING, March 24, 2011

By 

Molly M. Bounds "mbw" (mbw) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Groosham Grange (Paperback)

The characters in this book are stereotypical and flat--you've got the fat kid who seems like he will be a bigger secondary character but then disappears halfway through the story. Then there's the tomboy girl best friend that doesn't really do anything. I never bonded with the main character, and felt like he was just a puppet of the author, not a real person. Let's face it, we read books to escape not to follow a lifeless boy whose decisions make no sense. The ending doesn't add up, and we are never given the main character's thought process, so it just leaves you feeling like, "What the heck?" For such a short book, it kind of drags on.

It could almost be enjoyable except that every time you get interested in the plot, the author decides to throw a cheesy joke in. He also uses a couple characters at random points throughout the book to expound upon the horrors of Christianity--one character is a priest that Horowitz treats with a negative bias that completely breaks the narration. Then there is the teacher's soliloquy about how Christmas was never a Christian holiday and still isn't. They just don't fit with the book or the narration. It's like the author had a point to drive home and his treatment of it is awkward and lopsided.

Also, the father in the book is violently abusive. Horowitz tries to treat it as slapstick, but it's really kind of disturbing--for instance, in the beginning of the book the mother gets stabbed. There is also an attempted joke where the school inspector asks if a character is gay and is informed that the character certainly is queer. It's just not funny and it's inappropriate to joke with derogatory slurs like that in a kid's book.

Definitely not recommended!