They are the enemies of the Borribles, who hate them for their riches, their power, their haughtiness and their possessions. They look like huge moles or deformed rabbits, with long snouts and beady red eyes.
The Rumbles (who can’t pronounce their ‘r’s’ and refer to themselves as Wumbles!) live on Rumbledon Common. It was the Battersea Borribles who set up the Great Rumble Hunt. The most famous Borribles come from Battersea.
“Normal Kids are turned into Borribles very slowly, almost without being aware of it but one day they wake up and there it is… A child disappears from a school and the word goes round that he was ‘unmanageable’ the chances are he’s off managing by himself “ If a Borrible is caught by the police his ears are clipped and he starts to grow like any ordinary child.
The ears are important and Borribles always hide them under woolly hats when they are out and about. “Borribles are generally’ skinny and have pointed ears… They are pretty tough-looking and always scruffy, with their arses hanging out of their trousers, but apart from that they look just like normal children. Who are these Borribles`?’ And what is known about the man who invented them’
Now Piccolo have released The Borribles in paperback. In 1981 the Young Vic staged The Great Rumble Hunt with a cast of London schoolchildren, and Bodley Head published a second book The Borribles Go for Broke starring the fearless girl Borrible, Chalotte. Nevertheless it didn’t get paperbacked – too strong a meat for Puffins” – and the Borribles went underground again. Given that the book has a generous ration of bad language and violence and is morally ambiguous, it’s amazing that it was so well received by the children’s book establishment from The Times to Time Out via the TES. The Borribles first appeared in 1976 to a great deal of critical acclaim (shortlisted for the Whitbread Award, and The Other Award, voted onto the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults List) and a lot of noisy controversy.
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