The Harry Potter book and movie series did wonders for the self-esteem of depressed unemployed car-dwelling single mothers writing children's books on napkins all over the world. Now that JK Rowling showed it can indeed be done, here are some ideas for what may prove to be the next hit children's fantasy franchise, with a little less of all that silly wizardry and a little more something pretty much almost exactly along those same lines actually.
Above: Hortense Cumberbatch is on the case!
1) Barry Cotter and the Thinker's Rock
Young orphaned magician Barry Cotter discovers a magic gateway to a magician's school called Pigzits where he befriends a young Penn and Teller as they learn magic from douchy magicians with mullets and capes, mastering tricks like pulling a rabbit out of a hat and sawing an assistant in two. They thwart an attempted comeback by the evil magician Lord Copperfield, who killed Barry's parents with boredom when Barry was one year old, and somehow magic-tricked Claudia Schiffer into marrying him, all with the help of another magician, Gob Bluth, whose own magic tricks -- or "illusions" as he calls them -- save the day at Pigzits thanks to his special "unseeability blanket", a.k.a. the Aztec Tomb. Any resemblance to the Harry Potter storyline is purely coincidental.
2) Hortense Cumberbatch and the Myopic Mugwump
Mike Leigh's unforgettable children's character from Secrets and Lies, Hortense Cumberbatch is back! This time the orphaned optometrist has to crack the case of a mysterious near-sighted tergiversating politician from 1884 who can't figure out which side of the political "spectrum" he's on until Cumberbatch saves the day, building him a pair of "perspectacles" with which to gain a more "long-range view" of his and his nation's political interests as he "sees" that Grover Cleveland is the best man for the job! Cumberbatch's success silences her "myopic" critics, who are perplex(iglass)ed! Also, she hates herself in the mirror.
3) Gregor Samsa and the Penal Colony
A hilarious melange of beloved children's author Franz Kafka's adorable Gregor Samsa from the Metamorphosis on the one hand, and his enchanting tale In The Penal Colony on the other! Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself a giant insect in a penal colony where his family disown him and eventually torture him to death with a machine that carves Samsa's crime into his exoskeleton, which, being chitin, is hard to penetrate, so then his assistants -- who are the two bouncing balls from Blumfeld, An Elderly Bachelor -- bounce repeatedly on the giant needle so as to gradually nail it into Samsa's body as he's ripped to shreds while "I AM A DIRTY BUG" is carved over and over, even after he's virtually disintegrated! This educative book will also introduce children to fun new words like entomomorphicide, meaning "the killing of those in insect form", and will have very graphic illustrations to help focus on the story! There's also a moral dimension to this tale that asks "Is it a crime to be a giant bug?" to which the answer is: OBVIOUSLY.
4) JK Rowling and the Napkins of Starbucks
A napkins-to-riches tale of a depressed down-and-out single mother and English literature graduate who, during a train ride from Manchester to London, finds inspiration to write a novel about a wizardry school on napkins in cafes. While going cafe to cafe in search of napkins to write on, she finds the perfect napkin, durable, firm, smooth and unyielding, in her least favorite cafe: Starbucks. As Rowling reconciles her love for these napkins with her hatred for an evil billion-dollar corporate franchise that gets rich off virtual slave labor and overpriced beverages, she finds the winning formula that propels her to launch her own billion-dollar franchise based on what she has written on the napkins of Starbucks. There is a happy ending, of course, as Starbucks and Rowling make a deal to join forces to create a successful merchandising deal whereby Starbucks creates Harry Potter-themed coffee mugs and also makes magic brooms handily available in every Starbucks establishment in case anybody who works there magically decides they'd like to clean the fucking toilets once in a while.
5) Topsy Turvy and the Upside Down People
Young Topsy Turvy's family have just moved into a new home and she's feeling lonely, until, after climbing her bookshelf to catch a pretty little butterfly that flitted into her room, she touches the ceiling and discovers that there is a whole other invisible upside down world of creatures who share the same house, and for whom the ceiling is their floor and Topsy Turvy's floor is their ceiling! Topsy Turvy makes friends with them, but nobody believes that this upside down world exists, and they tell her it's a figment of her imagination, which it is, because it turns out Topsy Turvy is demented and the book ends with her being committed to a children's mental asylum. This story will inspire kids all over the world to climb bookshelves and touch the ceiling in a misguided attempt to recreate the magic of the book! It's a recipe for success, and also maybe a few lawsuits.
6) Kallamazoo Shitfly and Splosh the Magic Shitbucket
An endearing scatalogical story about a child who falls into a bucket of shit when he's just 2 years old, where he remains for three days because his alcoholic valium-addicted mother is passed out on the kitchen floor, dying of cirrhosis. While in the shitbucket, he forms a heartwarming fecal bond with the flies buzzing around him as they lick the shit off his face with their tiny little fly tongues (illustrations a must!). The flies become his shitty lifelong companions and Kallamazoo Shitfly always carries a magic bucket of shit around with him (whom he affectionately names Splosh) as they solve shitty mysteries and get into shitty adventures. The shitbucket has predictably shitty special powers. It changes form, shape, smell and texture to suit the shitty situation at hand (eg: when things go to shit, it turns semi-solid and hits the nearest fan, or when Kallamazoo and friends are in a shitty part of the world, it transforms into diarrhea and is very hard to control). The main idea here is shit, a billion dollars worth of shit.
7) Skeeter Granolaeater and the Hacky Sack of Hemp
Hippie hero Skeeter Granolaeater meets a circle of hippies from whom he hears of the fabled hacky sack of hemp, a magical ball with many uses, but he gets stoned instead and just hangs out and eats granola bars and completely forgets about the magic ball of hemp as he plays hacky sack all day with a normal old hacky sack. The End.
8) Inky McBlotter and the Messy Essay (Messay?)
There's ink all over this, so it's not even legible, but the title's pretty self-explanatory anyway.
9) Lord of the Flies
A children's book where children kill each other on an island!
10) I'm too bored to figure out a tenth one. So, I don't know... Farty McFart Fart and the Fart of Farts?
Ugh, what a waste of time.
