What Could Russell Brand Bring Us With His Trickster Tales?
Comedian Russell Brand, who isn't exactly known for his child friendly material, made a surprising announcement yesterday - he’s writing a children’s book. The funnyman confirmed, by way of a Youtube video that Russell Brand’s Trickster Tales will be released in November by Cannongate books. While some thought it was a joke a first, it seems no...this one is really happening. But what should we expect from a children’s book written by the notorious Russell Brand?
My Booky Wook’s success led to Brand being given a a £1.8 million two-book deal with HarperCollins in June 2008. The first release Articles of Faith, was a collection of the comedian’s articles for the Guardian newspaper between 2007 and 2008. Brand has been writing for the newspaper since 2006 and his article topics range from his political philosophies to his musings on his beloved West Ham United football club. A second autobiography My Booky Wook 2: This Time It's Personal debuted in 2010 and followed his life since achieving world wide fame. Inside he opened up about the much publicised Sachsgate scandal as well as his relationship with then fiancee and now ex wife, Katy Perry, whom the book was dedicated too.
Next page: check out our video of Russell taking the homeless out for breakfast
Providing the illustrations for Brand’s words is Chris Riddell, who’s best known for his work alongside Paul Stewart on the Edge Chronicles. Riddell is also the political cartoonist for The Observer newspaper and provides ‘Illustration to Unwritten Books’ for the Literary Review magazine. For his work he has won two Kate Greenaway Medals, the annual award for the best-illustrated children's book from the British Librarians collective (CILIP).
It will be interesting to see how Brand’s foray into children’s writing plays out. His two autobiographies have achieved success and Brand has developed his own unique writing voice, which is coincidently the same as his actual voice. The fact that he’s promising a reimagining of classic fairy tales leads us to expect something along the lines of Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes albeit with Brand’s own flair for language. One thing we can agree with Brand on is the importance of fairy tales for children, whilst they might be having a big screen renaissance, seeing them back on book shelves is certainly a good idea as well.
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