to change the ending of Mr Messy

[witchandchips]

well i'm sorry, poor old Mr Messy lives by himself far away by a big wood, yes he has issues with personal hygenie but is bothering no one. Suddenly two bowler hatted bureaucrats (Messers Neat and Tidy) suburbanify his house and destroy his individualistic look. DS and i spent half an hour talking about what Mr Messy needed to do when they had left to get the house back to normal

• are there anyother Mr Men books that need similar rewriting

all of them ! They irritate me intensely.

The one about mr tall - who leaves mr small to walk home (it takes him about a year ).

oh yes I feel terribly sad for mr small

and Mr Greedy who slims right down but is large again in all the other books!

I hate the Mr Men books.

It's interesting that Hargreves wrote a book about 'Roundies and squaries' before he wrote the Mr Men books.
He's obviously got issues with confomity/non conformity.
I loved the Mr Men when I was little - I thought they were faintly subversive!

for the record I'm a Roundy!!!

They are basically a bunch of characters with ishoos.
Mr Greedy - overeating
Mr Fussy - OCD
Mr Happy - codependent

etc etc

Roger Hargreaves should be tried for crimes against parenthood - they're all foul to read out loud, boring, conformist, sizist and too many other ..ists to mention. burn the lot the lot of them

They should all be consigned to Room 101.

you have all made me laugh and inspired me to get rid of our one copy of Mr Bump (bought by unknowing dp). Agree that they are just awful to read aloud. Feel the same way about Thomas the Tank Engine.

oh yes - Thomas Tank and Mr Men (and Little Miss which are worse) should all be consigned immediately to room 101.

Aw, but I love the artwork. I like illustrations/animation where you can see the felt tip pen marks. I read Mr Men as a small child and didn't grow up to be conformist! Ds has all my old ones where I'd crossed out the ones I owned from the list on the back.

I like Thomas, too (the original ones). So shoot me!

Oh don't start me on Thomas and Co. They make the Mr Men look like a perfectly functional bunch.

I do like witch's revisionist approach to Mr Messy, btw, but I think ds will probably weigh up the book against the state of our house and realise it is fantasy, tbh... either that or rebel grow up to be very neat and tidy.

must be a mindset thing - DH can happily read Thomas and Mr Men (and the kids love them ) it is just me who hates them in our house.

thomas is a period piece, written in the 50s and of it's time. Most of the original stories are based on real events - the Little Lost Engine makes me cry because I 'know' the real locomotive.

eek, 'its'!

Message withdrawn

Pictures are lovely but think you can see a direct line for land of Mr Men to Daily Mail island where all the weird people are outcasts and all women are happy to be "Little misses"