Possibly due to the cartoon's popularity, the rebooted book series resembles the cartoon with a storyteller framing device—this time, a hotel manager showing the reader the misbehaving children staying in the rooms of The Hot Hell Darkness,[8][9] all punished there for eternity,[10] and explaining why and how they came to his hotel; each chapter dedicated to their stories.

In Skegness, there is an unusual witchetty grub: a human-sized, anthropomorphic larva that watches television, eats crisps, and cries itself to sleep when stressed.

Once upon a time, the larva is Savannah Slumberson, a lazy girl who prefers watching television in her bedroom instead of joining her active parents' rock climbing and cycling holidays.

Savannah dreads the holiday to come as Sprite explains camp activities, and tension arises when she learns no one is allowed to spend mornings in bed.

They shoo the grub away, end their holiday and leave for home, and Sprite loans their lot to a family from Skegness.

One day, he returns home from the pet shop with a python he names SisterEater, making Mayflower scream so loud, framed pictures fall off the wall and a light bulb breaks.

Mayflower sometimes turns an ear to the toilet to check her brother's cries of anguish can still be heard, and laughs all the way to bed.

After a few minutes of screeching, they lose their patience and shuffle parts off their plate to their daughter, but Shannon then complains what they give her is too cold to eat.

This routine is by design, and Shannon does not care whether she has more food on her plate or not—the more her parents give in to her demands, the more satisfying the day becomes.

The wearer is Mr Pecorino, the owner of the Hubble Bubble Boil and Trouble restaurant, promoting his business door-to-door.

Shannon, now in a costume, calls out for someone to zip the back just as the tank lobsters pick her up and carry her to a pot full of water mistakenly still boiling on the cooker.

As the head stirred in the pot, its eyes slowly glazed over, as if the wolf was giving Eagan a confirming look of recognition.

The MacQueen bloodline has continued into the present, and Eagan's descendants live by Darnaway Forest where he fought the pack three centuries ago.

Recently, rumours circulated the area that wolfpacks had returned, intensifying when people reported sightings and a stag hunter died.

Elspet and Callum MacQueen have two children, one of them their newborn daughter Moira, and Highland wolves have a reputation of kidnapping babies to feed their families.

However, their ten-year-old son Garth becomes excited at the idea—hopefully, his baby sister being kidnapped will mean his parents willstop ignoring him.

Garth commences his plan of trying to alert the wolves: throwing tantrums, staining walls with food, crying, thumb-sucking, and babbling.

When Garth purposely binge eats junk food and vomits in the car, Callum warns his son that the wolves might kidnap him instead of Moira if he continues.

That night, Garth wakes up in a panic after a nightmare about wolves trapping him in his bedroom, and vows to never imitate a baby again.

Garth calls for his parents to help, but they only hear their son resuming his baby imitations and ignore him for the rest of the day.

It fails to convince them, but the argument is overheard by a far-away fruit bat, thankful it has found a place to find something to eat.

At midnight, the fruit bat opens Cherrie's window, flies onto her bed and eats a hidden tangerine.

On Cherry Tree Farm live four tiny, underweight piglets named Insy, Winsy, Nibble and Titch, whose siblings and other family members fight over the trough and successfully eat everything before they can get to it.

Somewhere in an adjacent city lives Trueman "Truffle" Shuffle, an extremely lazy boy who dumps his clothes around his home, refuses to walk upstairs without being carried and makes his parents spread toothpaste on his brush.

Eventually, his mother loses her temper and snaps back that "the clothes pigs" will emerge from his messes and chase him with anything they can think of—snout, teeth or trotters—if he refuses to change his attitude.

One day, Mrs Shuffle falls down the stairs after tripping over clothing her son has dropped earlier, breaking her leg.

Truffle ignores her pained cries for help and orders her to make his dinner, and leaves the house to go the fish and chip shop when she "refuses".

When he returns home, his father scolds him for his selfish behaviour, which is at a pitch to carry across the city through the vibrations of garden washing lines.

Orion Publishing distributed a two-part edit of Degas' narration as audio download releases with Spoken Network in 2007.