History has never been so much fun,’ says the blurb of one of the books reviewed below. Welcome to the twenty-first century. Work is fun. History is fun. Writing is fun. Writing history must therefore be really fun!

The English writer Terry Deary was the creator of the Horrible History series, which blatantly exploits the perceived unlimited capacity of most nine-year-olds to wallow in poo and spew. This model has been eagerly taken up by other imitators, and one of the strangest is Anna Clark’s Convicted! The Wonderful World of Kids, Crims and Other Convict Capers (Hardie Grant Egmont, $12.95 pb, 110 pp, 1920878602). Illustrated by Kate Cawley with varying success (the convicts certainly look stunted and grim but her captions are odd), this book’s type size and language suggest that it is intended as a text for children eight years and up.