Episode 64 - Don't Try This At Home (The Whiz Mob And The Grenadine Kid and The Three Robbers)

This week, we're reading books in which people steal (and do other reprehensible, dangerous or immoral things)! First up, our chapter book is The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid, written by Colin Meloy and illustrated by Carson Ellis. Charlie is the lonely, slightly maladjusted son of an American diplomat in 1961 Marseille. He's been advised to look upon this posting as a holiday, but he's not having it. While he's out alone and writing, Charlie's very nice pen is stolen by a boy about his own age. The theft is so thrilling and beautiful that instead of getting upset about it, Charlie makes a deal with the pickpocket. He can keep the pen, if only he'll teach Charlie to steal like that. Before he knows it, Charlie is getting a crash course in pickpocketing, and in the particular moral codes that govern the art. Charlie falls in with a proper gang, a real group of friends, and for the first time in years, he's happy. But how long can such an idyll last? Can Charlie keep his life as a diplomat's son along side his new identity as a child pickpocket?

The Three Robbers, written and illustrated by Tomi Ungerer, feels like it's set in the same world as the Whiz Mob. It's a strange fable about a set of robot-like highwaymen in cloaks and hats who terrorise the countryside, holding up coaches and stripping travelers of all their worldly goods. They keep all the loot in a cave until they accidentally steal a child. The child asks them what all the money is for, and the question is so profound that it fundamentally alters the course of their life. Whether or not it changes for the better? Only you can tell.

You can read the bad review of The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid here in full (I abridged it for our purposes)

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