Come on you noble lad! Be brave, be bionic!

This week we talked about Grinny and Monster Maker by Nicholas Fisk.
Audio clips are from a CBS Storybreak Special adaption of Grinny from 1988 and a Jim Henson Hour adaption of Monster Maker from 1989.

If you want to follow us on instagram we are stillscaredpodcast, and our email address is stillscaredpodcast@gmail.com. Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her work at her website, and new music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Joe Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

Transcript

Ren Welcome to Still Scared: Talking Children’s Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children’s books, films and TV. Today we’re talking about Grinny and Monster Maker by Nicholas Fisk. Enjoy!

Ren Hi Adam!

Adam Hoy hoy, hello Ren!

Ren Are you ready to talk about some scary grannies?

Adam Do you mean, am I ready to talk about safeguarding issues in the 1970s, because yes I am!

Ren I think that will come up, yeah!

Adam So we’re talking about two books by Nicholas Fisk, Grinny and the slightly later Monster Maker.

Ren Yes, and this was a listener recommendation actually, so thank you Dave, if you’re listening!

Adam I hope they’re still listening, when was this recommended?

Ren Only last year! It’s fine!

Adam Yeah, knowing our updates that’s pretty good! So had you read either of this before?

Ren No, I hadn’t even heard of them!

Adam I’d heard of Grinny, and the name stuck in my head but I’d always side-eyed it. The kids in the book do this ‘eyes right’ trick which is basically side-eyeing, and I think I side-eyed Grinny much as the kids do. I didn’t like the name, so I didn’t read it. But I did read Trillions, which isn’t horror though it is a bit uncanny — it’s a science fiction book that he wrote about an alien dust that communicates by forming itself into patterns. Which did make quite an impression on me, but that was the only Nicholas Fisk I had read until now.

Ren So he’s described as a science fiction writer for children, which is quite an interesting niche. In terms of comparisons to what we’ve talked about before I’d say he’s closest to William Sleator.

Adam Because some William Sleator is more cynical and nastier than others, the view of human nature is quite cynical in something like House of Stairs, or The Night the Heads Came, and there is a bit of William Sleator crossover.

I think Nicholas Fisk is certainly more interested in the science fiction side of things — William Sleator is basically Black Mirror for kids. The science fiction stuff is thinly sketched and he’s mostly interested in the ramifications — if there was a doubling or a cloning machine, what would be the ramifications? He doesn’t really care very much about what that cloning machine would look like and how it would operate.

Whereas I feel with Nicholas Fisk, even though he doesn’t go into lots of detail about Grinny’s home planet, I feel like that’s all worked out in his head. There’s some real sci-fi underlying these books even if you don’t see much of it.

In Monster Maker, which actually isn’t much of a science fiction book, there is a lot of technical detail about how the monsters in the book are made.

Ren Yeah — Monster Maker is an interesting book, I think we’ll get to that later and talk about Grinny first, because it’s the more well-known one. Even if we both preferred Monster Maker.

Adam Yes, that’s true but you are right, Grinny is more well known, and my edition is the Puffin Modern Classics edition, a re-release from the ‘90s when we were kids, and it’s got an afterword, possibly by the series editor talking about when he first read Grinny.

Ren I have the same edition, with an old lady on the front with bright white eyes and purple teeth in front of a flying saucer, with some forked lightening coming down.

Adam It looks a bit like a graphic from one of those terrible alien conspiracy videos on YouTube.

Ren Yeah! But it’s in pretty good company in the Puffin Modern Classics — we’ve got Watership Down, The Borrowers, The Dark is Rising —

Adam — Which we will have to do at some point.

Ren We will, yes. So it’s obviously quite well-liked.

Adam It’s pretty high concept.

Ren Yeah!

Adam What if there was an alien invading your home but it looked like a sweet old lady.

Ren So it’s told through the diary of 11-year old Tim who is… (Ren laughs)

Adam You’re just laughing even thinking about Tim!

Ren He is a very pompous little boy.

Adam He’s precocious, I think it’s fair to say. Can I just read this little passage, it’s from page 11, so right near the beginning but I think it will give the listeners a sense of the character of Tim.

‘Then Father came in from feeding the rabbits. He made a complete bosh of it as usual, saying all the wrong things, making it quite clear that he hadn’t a clue about the existence of Great Aunts. But she fixed him with her beady eye and grinned and said: “You remember me, Edward” and he re-entered the twentieth century in great style, pouring everyone sherry. He gave Beth, who is seven, as much sherry as me, eleven, which is typical. Beth was as ever the outstanding social success and shook hands and said “Oh, what a lovely surprise” and looked more like a telly ad than ever. Hmph. I suppose it’s a graceful accomplishment but it’s also the mark of a little cow. She swallowed the sherry pretty fast and went across to pour herself some more but Mum caught her eye and said “Beth” and that was the end of it. I got another half-glass later. It was quite good sherry, a Manzanilla.’

Ren Thank you.

Adam Reading him as Noel Coward, perhaps. But yes, he is a little eleven-year old sherry connoisseur.

Ren Yep. That’s a good passage because that shows us Great-Aunt Emma’s, later known as Grinny’s, main trick for dealing with adults, which is saying “You remember me” and then they go “Oh yes, of course, Great-Aunt Emma.”

(Clip from CBS Storybreak Special adaption from 1988:
Woman: Hello, may I help you?
Beth: She says she’s my Great-Aunt Emma! Mom, do I have one?
Woman: Not that I know of!
Grinny: Oh, I’m sure you remember me. (Sound effects)
Woman: Beth, this is your Great-Aunt Emma! The one we’re always talking about!
Man: Who did you say it was, dear?
Woman: You know my Aunt Emma?
Man: Funny… I don’t seem to —
Grinny: Of course you remember me! (Sound effects)
Man: Oh, Aunt Emma! How have you been? Will you be staying long?)

Adam Which I think is the name of the sequel to the book: ‘You remember me’, in which another alien of the same race, another robot alien is dispatched to Earth in the form of a TV presenter, apparently.

Ren So she appears on the doorstep and says ‘You remember me, Millie’ and is invited into the family home for a seemingly indefinite visit. Tim records the various eccentricities of Great-Aunt Emma that are first amusing — she stares at the family as they get out of the pool naked, she has this odd aversion to electricity, but then become sinister as Tim’s little sister Beth becomes convinced that Great-Aunt Emma, or Grinny, is not only not related to them, but not real at all.

(Clip from TV adaptation:
Beth: She’s weird!
Tim: Come on Beth! Great-Aunt Emma just doesn’t like dogs, especially wet dogs!
Man: Tim, Beth, what’s all the noise?
Beth: I’m telling Mom and Dad about you!)

Adam I looked this up on Goodreads, and the swimming pool nudity seems to be the thing that puts a lot of modern readers off. So, the top most rated review was from a woman who said this book was not appropriate for children because the family swim naked, and this had a lot of likes.

Ren Huh!

Adam And there’s some truth to the fact that the kids don’t seem to particularly care for the swimming, although I think their issue is not so much swimming naked as swimming when it’s cold. I can see why Nicholas Fisk uses it as a device, and you probably wouldn’t get it in a kids’ book today, but Grinny doesn’t know anything about human anatomy, and being on a fact-seeking mission from the aliens is interested in this.

So that’s why when they get out the pool naked she looks at them, and obviously that seems creepy and weird. Tim as a narrator contextualises it a little bit and talks about the free-thinking health set, and puts it in this very 1970s context when there would have been middle class families going to a naturist colony for their health. So I think the idea is that the father’s on a health kick and this swimming naked is part of that.

Ren And it is their own pool.

Adam Yeah, which he does say, ‘We do have standards, we wouldn’t just walk around naked in someone else’s house or leave the toilet door open’. But I thought it was worth mentioning that this does seem to be the most common response to it on Goodreads, that the book is inappropriate because of this. And it is a small ele