Grimble

Infobox Book
name = Grimble


image_caption = Cover of the 1968 Edition
author = Clement Freud
illustrator = Frank Francis
country = England
language = English
publisher = Collins
pub_date = 1968
pages = 44
isbn =
oclc =
preceded_by = (none)
followed_by = "Grimble at Christmas"

"Grimble" is a children's book by Clement Freud, published by Collins in 1968. A sequel, "Grimble at Christmas" was published some years later. The book was illustrated by Frank Francis. In the 1970's, the two titles were published in a compendium volume by Puffin Books, with drawings by Quentin Blake. Both books are currently out of print.

Grimble is also the name of a fictitious town in Northern England, which appears in two stories of the "Rumpole" series by John Mortimer: "Rumpole and the Show Folk" and "The Return of Rumpole".

From the Dust Jacket

"What would you do if:

you did not have a fixed birthday?your parents usually communicated with you by notes?you came home from school on Monday to find that your parents had gone, without warning, to Peru?"

Plot

Grimble is a boy of "about 10" who has parents that can be described as eccentric. Returning from school one day, he discovers that they have gone to Peru for a week leaving him with a fridge filled with bottles of tea, an oven filled with sandwiches, a tin full of sixpence pieces and a list of five names and addresses of people he can visit to get help with dinner. Each day he visits a new address, though on each occasion his host is out. The book is a humorous account of his life alone for five days.

"Grimble" in Popular Culture

The book was read on the BBC children's television show "Jackanory" and (according to the dust jacket) Freud received 23,500 letters about the work, including 64 letters of complaint from domestic science teachers who thought the book disgraceful.

Both J. K. Rowling and Lauren Child have cited the work as being a favourite book of theirs.

In 2005 it was reprinted in the anthology "Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out" to raise money for the youth writing center 826NYC. [cite web | url = http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/07/24/102949.php | publisher=Blogcritics Magazine|title = Book Review: Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs... edited by Ted Thompson and Eli Horowitz| date=2006-07-21|accessdate = 2007-12-23]

References

*Lauren Child Interview - http://www.wattspub.co.uk/lchilob.htm

*JK Rowling Interview - http://www.amazon.ca/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000053461