NASTYbook [Paperback]

Barry Yourgrau (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up

Why would criminals kidnap a cuddly teddy bear? Or monsters attack a kid for picking his nose?

'Cause Nice is overrated

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

These 43 very short—vignettes? essays? anecdotes?—aim at outrageousness but fall curiously flat. An unidentified narrator relates a variety of gruesome, grisly, gross or just plain stupid sketches (there isn't enough meat in any one of them to call it a story) about nose-picking, farting, monsters, poisoning, pimples and assorted dementia, like a boy with a toenail-clippings fetish. Decapitation is a recurrent event. The tone is mostly dark: in "Cake," a boy freezes to death after running away from home and his parents' reaction is to sell off his bike at a yard sale, but the subject matter is mostly grade-school, meaning this will likely miss the mark with its intended audience. An inventive design (the book is bound so that the text appears upside down and many pages appear to bear smudgy black fingerprints) may draw in reluctant readers. The last entry, "Goblins and Their Crimes," is about a "bitter starving writer of exquisitely arty, bad-selling fiction," who decides to write children's books because "how hard can it be to make up a story about some little wizard, like what'shisname; or a bunny that runs down a hole?" As this tedious collection points out, it's harder than it looks. Ages 10-up.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

Grade 6-8–An author of adult titles brings his surreal perspective to this uneven collection of macabre tales. Unlike the lighthearted gloominess of Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events" (HarperCollins), the general mood here is world-weary cynicism. The stories vary dramatically in style and quality. "The Werewolf's Garden" is a darkly comic satire of the movie business. "Panda" is a truly eerie account of a disturbed child and his homicidal pet. "Skateboard" is a standard ghost story in the campfire tradition. There are several ironic, just-deserts vignettes in the style of the old "Twilight Zone" series. Practical jokers send the new kid on a pizza delivery to a vampire's lair and find that tomato sauce and blood don't mix. Other stories rely on adult themes, cruelty, and gross-out effects. A lustful pirate mistakes a shark for a willing mermaid and an over-the-hill superhero fights evildoers with powerful flatulence. Characterization is variable as well, sometimes drawn with spare, subtle descriptions and other times in broad caricatures. The book is deliberately printed upside down and illustrated only with scattered black fingerprints.–Elaine E. Knight, Lincoln Elementary Schools, IL
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060579803
• ISBN-13: 978-0060579807
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,738,700 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Graphic and visceral short stories that will disturb and delight, August 11, 2005

By 

Teenreads.com (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: NASTYbook (Hardcover)

A boy is sent to a doctor to learn to stop picking his nose. A hot teen movie star gets transformed into a gerbil. A boy tickles his girlfriend until she explodes. A pirate captain becomes violently seasick. These are just some of the scenarios in Barry Yourgrau's NASTYbook, a collection of gruesome and grotesque stories intended to disgust and delight young readers.

My first mistake in reading NASTYbook was to be fooled by the cover, which is put on backwards, so readers looks like they are reading the book upside down. My second mistake was thinking that it wouldn't actually be as nasty as the title suggests. Do not underestimate the nastiness of this book. Along with normal gross-out nose-picking and bodily fluids, NASTYbook contains all sorts of bad behavior, including decapitations, animal rampages, and revenge from beyond the grave.

The stories in NASTYbook are short, usually just a few pages long, and extremely effective. One type is a fable with the ironic punch of Kafka, like "Peanut Shells," about an elephant who's caught cheating on a test with notes it cannot in fact read, or "Ugly," a story about a boy with bad skin who becomes the monster he feels himself to be. Other stories have the tone of Hilaire Belloc's CAUTIONARY TALES FOR CHILDREN, about juveniles whose bad behavior is rewarded with bad ends. Still others are just plain grotesque, or unnervingly scary, like "Oof Oof" about the ghost of a teddy bear who comes back to haunt its tormentors. The collection is visceral and disturbing, and exactly the sort of thing many kids would enjoy reading, even as many parents would find it inappropriate or upsetting.

Yourgrau's work, whether for children or adults, is at its best when he writes lean stories ripped with vivid imagery. His work is like a window into other people's nightmares. Even though they are clearly prose, there is something poetic about even the nastiest stories in NASTYbook. Yourgrau's work reminds me of Shel Silverstein's. It has the same awareness that childhood isn't just sweetness and innocence, but also can be filled with fear, superstition and brutality.

NASTYbook is fun to read and truly distressing, a book that will convince many young people that reading is more exciting than they previously thought. It does not seek any kind of moral or artistic redemption, but may find it anyway. NASTYbook is likely to be on the banned books list for many years to come.

--- Reviewed by Sarah A. Wood

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars NASTY BOOK REVIEW, January 22, 2006

By 

max mordini "max" (highland park) - See all my reviews

This review is from: NASTYbook (Hardcover)

My name is Max Mordini and I just get finished reading Nasty. Well I didn't know what was in store for me until I opened the book and realized that it was backwards and upside down. This right away caught my eye that the author was a funny guy. I also didn't know that the book was filled with 43 little halarious storys; I guess. Well the thing is they were only about 4 to 5 pages long so I don't know what to call them. Well as i said before you know that this book wasn't an actual chapter book with a begining, rising action, climax, etc. It didnt have a problem, but there was a problem in some of the short stories. For example, in the story Pizza a delivery boy has to deliver a pizza to a vampire. His friends gave him garlic, but no crucifix, and no silver bullet therefore........well you probubly know what happend. Another example is the story Monster about a boy who has the most ugly face; with pimples, warts, and acne. He decides that there's no point in life, so he drops out of school and starts scaring people for a living. One day he comes home and finds face cream and it works. Now the problem is solved.
I thought something good came out of the reading although i was expecting a chapter book. I am actually glad that I stumbled on to this book, but it wasn't the best book iv'e read i mean some of the storys made absolutely no sense, so I decided to try to think what the author was thinking and how wacky he is in real life. The book wasn't very exciting as much as it was funny though. The author was very creative I think. I wouln't of come up with the wacko ideas he had. They were absolutely out of the box, I mean way out.
If I had to rate this book I would give it 3.5 stars. You should read this book if you just want to kick back and relax and have a couple good laughs particularly around summer time. I recommend this book for boys and girls 9 and up. All in all The Nasty Book wasn't so nasty, but it was funny.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SO FUNNY!!, June 17, 2005

By 

Kite Flyer (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: NASTYbook (Hardcover)

This book is hysterical! We heard the author being interviewed on NPR Sunday show, the interviewer could barely get out her questions, she was giggling so hard. Can blame her? We gave the book to our favorite niece and she went running around the living room screaming in delight. (She's a big Roald Dahl fan, that must explain some of it.) Neil Gaiman's blurb says it right, "magnifiecently nasty", oh indeedie. This is a book for kids (and us elders) who like to laugh, if you don't count yrself one of that kind, ha ha anyway!