Naughty Children is a downright book about downright naughty children, who are naughty from a childish point of view; it is not "clever' or 'comic' or 'nostalgic' for the benefit of grown-ups. It has been designed for boys and girls, between the ages of seven or eight and, say, fifteen; and every entry has been tried on a carefully selected, reasonably naughty, child, and if it failed to entertain, rejected out of hand.
As to actual content, Edwardian and Victorian children do seem to have excelled in naughtiness and no apology is made for including so many of them here: Katy in What Katy Did, swinging on the forbidden swing; Eric choking with laughter in church over the release of the grasshopper on to the bonnet of the lady in the pew in front; Tom Sawyer, Topsy, the absolutely ineffable Lady Noggs Peeress, and many other old favourites. There are extracts from Dickens, George Eliot, Thackeray,
O. Henry (with The Ransom of Red Chief); and there is Pet Marjorie declaring that the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 is what nature itself can't endure'.
Nearer the present day are William, Biggles, and anecdotes of Prince Philip, Churchill, Dylan Thomas and Schiaparelli who thought herself so hideous that she plastered her face with mud and tried to grow flowers on it. The book opens with a foreword by Christianna Brand; and there are forty illustrations by the one and only Ardizzone-whose own children contribute an anecdote or two of unparalleled villainy.