How hard is it to get your children interested in history? From experience if it isn’t a big lizard with jaggy teeth and chases smaller jaggy toothed lizards the kids usually don’t want to know. But why is that? It seems to be their imagination and how cool they might be. Admit it, if you were to choose between finding out about dinosaurs and the ’slaves’ that built the pyramids you’d choose the dinosaurs every time.

Enter the Horrible History books. Just when you thought you couldn’t get a child to read a book these come along. Theres something faintly disturbing about a young boys fascination with disgusting things and I’m talking as an adult who still likes playing with slime and turning my dinner into mash potato monsters just like Calvin. But thanks to that fascination these books just get the kids hook line and sinker.

The most recent one that I looked at was a Christmas present to my step-son all about ancient Egypt. Despite a few inaccuracies the books manage to fill the kids full of facts that they’ll be repeating for years. I only picked up on a few things that may be misleading or wrong because I follow Bob Brier’s work on mummies thanks to my own fascination with the subject but as far as a 6-7 year old is concerned they won’t know the difference!