Lucinda Whiteley Audiobooks

Horrid Henry arrived first in Francesca Simon’s books, illustrated by Tony Ross, and became a fixture of British childhood in print. The reason he then became a fixture on screen is largely down to Lucinda Whiteley.

Whiteley co-founded Novel Entertainment and serves as its creative director, and she wrote and produced the animated Horrid Henry series that has run for years on British children’s television, along with Horrid Henry: The Movie. Her credits reach back through a good deal of children’s programming, including Fimbles, The Roly Mo Show and Cinemaniacs, which is a useful clue to the range: she is as comfortable writing for the very young as for the seven year old who has just worked out that being appalling is funny.

The audio collections issued under her name grow directly out of that screen work. They are written for the ear, with the pace and the joke density of television rather than the shape of a chapter book.

These are short, loud and designed to be survived by parents as well as enjoyed by children. Each collection gathers Henry stories at somewhere between an hour and a half and two and a half hours, which maps neatly onto a long car journey or a wet afternoon.

They are performed by a full cast rather than a single narrator, and that is rather the point of them: Henry, Perfect Peter, Moody Margaret and the rest all have their own voices, sound effects and all, so the listening sits closer to radio comedy than to a bedtime reading. Big Story Bonanza and Awesome Adventures have gone down particularly well with young listeners.

The collections are reaching us in stages, so it is worth checking back as more appear. Everything currently available is listed below.