I believe that Grizzly Tales: Gruesome Grown Ups is not a good read, because despite the stories teaching sinister lessons about voice control, balanced meals and vanity, I have started to believe it may cause kids to insult their parents and do nasty things to them.
So, I believe this book is crossed off my list entirely. It's a no read. Right off.
I have started reading Grizzly Tales: Gruesome Grown Ups, and the first story, Jamie's School Dinners, was gross and absolutely horrifying at the same time. It made me want to have actual chicken nuggets, no matter how the story portrayed children who only have one thing for meals every day.
When I got up to the bit where Jamie had chicken drumsticks, I was immediately hooked, because the main villain, Ambrosine, was stuffing him up as plump as who everyone calls him now, a 'little goose'. To make matters worse, Jamie's parents' health and concern for their now-heavyweight son deteriorate with every day that goes on, and as Jamie eats countless weights of food, he develops yellow zits on his face, and grows mushrooms all around his neck! Yeuck!
But, I am glad Amazon Kindle had annotations, so I could deliver my own thoughts on the story. Speaking of which, there is a part where the narrator tells us about a spoof of Doctor Who called Doctor Which. And what did I toggle in the annotations box?
"Ooh, burn!"
Typical sci-fi fan on a detox. Anyway, Ambrosine lures the now-obese Jamie towards her island, where she cooks him with horrid, nasty things usually taken out of healthy food for kids, mainly the e-numbers you'd find in Pink Wafers, until Jamie explodes.
The story ends on a dark note as Jamie's parents forget everything about their son, because he is served to another schoolboy in another part of the country during lunchtime, implying that he is about to meet the same fate as our morbidly-weight-gaining hero.
Now, I am not like Jamie, if you can ask me how I keep myself healthy and clean. I have a morning and nightly skincare routine, I put cream on my itchy and stingy spots which frequently appear on my body, and I shower regularly, not to mention I eat a variety of things for every meal, not just chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers.
So please, parents, if you see a child with an eating disorder, don't tell him if his parents offered him their brains. Instead, ask him about his hygiene, habits and diet. You might be able to offer some advice to his parents...but do they have the brains to take it all in?
If any parents were as grizzly as the main character's parents of this Grizzly Tales story, they'd probably need some therapeutic training and experimentation on their hands. But through my lens, this story, titled 'Jamie's School Dinners', is not cited as a cautionary tale for 'lovers of Squeam' as promised, but a warning about ignoring the needs and habits of a child with an eating disorder, like Jamie. This essay will give you a better understanding of the themes portrayed rather negatively in the episode.
The story starts by introducing Jamie and his habit of eating chicken nuggets every day, day in, day out, and goes on to explain that his parents gave him their brains so he can know more, thus making them careless enough to refuse to understand their son's needs and habits, and only force him to eat greasy plates of meat and lard. Even temptation to eat healthy things from the new head teacher at his school goes awry, thus showcasing his dislike for healthy, balanced food.
However, the arrival of the main villain, an evil dinner lady, makes Jamie's experience with everyone around him neglecting his eating disorder worse, as she keeps force feeding him, leading to endless teasing and days and days of ignorance and refusal. As the days fly by, Jamie's experience with being force fed gets worse and worse, from getting morbidly obese to developing worse acne on his face.
All these side effects of Jamie's mistreatment represent those a child with an eating disorder thinks he or she loves not giving them the healthy, balanced diet they wanted, and only giving them big portions instead of one little portion a day. If you give a child big platefuls of meat, or one of the same food, they might think it's a healthy, balanced diet, and might demand more. The theme of greed is present in every Grizzly Tales story, so this one takes its main character's bad eating habits - or, disorder as we call it these days - waaaaaaaaaaaay too far.
This is documented near the story's shocking climax, where the wicked villain plants a time bomb in Tom's abdomen and lures him back to her rustic kitchen lair, where she uses him as an ingredient for her cooking show which a family of trolls from hell watch fiercely.
The shocking twist might thrill and gross out kids watching, but can also warn parents about what might happen if they ignore the needs, habits and preferences of their eating disorder-diagnosed kids, and encourages them in a sinister manner to balance their one favourite food with food they've never tried before, such as rice, bananas, beans, veggies, fruits and other healthy food, which is what's needed to build a healthy, growing body.
It also encourages them in a startling, sloppy manner to give their kids 5 minutes of exercise a day, not a lot, because it may hurt their bodies. Too much exercise for unfit people can tear their muscles and cause endless, daily stitches which may need bucketloads of Voltarol.
Good job, Honeycomb Animation. Maybe if you sold Grizzly Tales to the USA, you'd use this episode to teach about America's confrontation with their parents' worries about their kids' obsession with pigging out on junk food while watching Spongebob all day.
Teen Titans Go airing all the time on Cartoon Network is getting a bit boring, right, Honeycomb?
Grizzly Tales: Gruesome Grown-ups: Cautionary Tales for Lovers of Squeam! by Jamie Rix