The world's worst children 3 by David Walliams

HarperCollins, 2018. ISBN 9780008304607
Highly recommended. Where do I start when telling you about David Walliams "The worlds worst children 3"?! What an awesome storyteller he is!
This book is full of 10 short stories about a variety of horrible children or sibling groups who really are, as the title suggests, the worlds worst! They are terrible, awful, mean, nasty, stinky, gross, absolutely HORRENDOUS children, and after reading this book I am thankful for my well behaved spawn.
My almost 8 year old son and I read this book, and laughed the whole way through. David Walliams has the most incredible way of writing these stories that are appealing to so many different stages of readers. My son is a reluctant reader and would much prefer to be read to - however this book got his attention and hooked him in! He wanted to read it on his own which is a huge tick for me. The shorter chapters (each their own horrible story about another despicable character) meant that he could read them himself, with little help from an adult and also capture his imagination and sense of humour to keep him going.
My almost 4 year old also enjoyed listening and added in her fair share of laughs or often an 'Eeeww" or "that's yuk Mummy!" followed by laughter!
In addition to this the wonderful illustrations by Tony Ross compliment the story and help to increase understanding of the story for the younger listeners. They also made us laugh out loud even more! His drawings are both gruesome and lively, funny and captivating. I don't think the story would be as good without them.
The stories include Tandy who tantrums so badly her parents eventually leave her and move to Australia (and can still sometimes hear her), Hank who played pranks on his poor family and eventually had one turn on him and go terribly wrong and of course the triplets who were the most disgusting children I have ever read about (but I will let you read that story for yourself!).
This is the first of "The world's worst children" series that we have read and I am going to go and find the first two as we loved them so much. Definitely 5 out of 5 stars!
Lauren Fountain