Plus ça change? Struwwelpeter's 21st Century Cousins
Following in the tradition of the hugely popular cautionary tales of Dr Heinrich
Hoffmann, and most notably Shock-Headed Peter or Slovenly Peter, the English-speaking
world continues to produce stories where children who dare to contravene societal norms suffer
calamitous consequences. This chapter offers a contrastive analysis between the tales from
Hoffmann’s collection and the ten stories in the first volume of David Walliams’ trilogy The
World’s Worst Children (2016) – with particular reference to the woes of Nigel, Nit-Boy, who