Kidlit Haha Week Day #3: THE MISCHIEVOUS AND THE MACABRE with Jack Meggitt-Phillips

Hello, Funny Folks!

When looking to expand our content to include middle-grade, I knew exactly who I wanted to reach out to. As a huge fan of the Series of Unfortunate Events books as a child, I had often wished I could re-experience reading it for the first time. So, I devoured THE BEAST AND THE BETHANY once I got my hands on it. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. Needless to say, I was thrilled when Jack agreed to be part of this year’s Kidlit Haha Week.

Welcome, Jack! Can you share a brief journey of how THE BEAST AND THE BETHANY came to be from first draft to publication? 

It all started with the beast. I’d had the idea for a while of a creature who likes eating terrible people in the same way that a cheese connoisseur loves eating only the very stinkiest of cheeses. However, the story really came to life when I realised that there would probably need to be someone who brought the beast its meals. When I came up with the character of the vain, immature, yet somehow still somewhat likeable Ebenezer Tweezer, it all clicked into place. And then when I started thinking about Bethany – the rude, loveable prankster who finds herself next on the beast’s menu – I knew I had a story. 

I started the book at my grandmother’s house, one boxing day, and finished it by the following Easter.  From there came the nerve-wracking process of pitching first to agents, and then with my agent to publishers – so nerve-wracking, that I had to start biting other people’s fingernails, because I’d already worn through my own.  

We secured a book deal by the Autumn, and the first book in the series was released the following year. It was and remains a heady, wonderful whirlwind.  I still pinch myself about twice daily to make sure that the whole thing hasn’t been a cruel dream.  

What comedic media (TV, books, radio) influenced the humor in THE BEAST AND THE BETHANY? 

Blackadder is a huge influence – particularly the third series, where Edmund Blackadder plays a dastardly butler to Hugh Laurie’s dim-witted, sock-obsessed Prince Regent. 

It’s only just occurred to me that Ebenezer Tweezer is a combination of these two characters. Ebenezer does dastardly things – such as bringing the beast a child to eat – and yet his character is also obsessed with socks, snazzy trousers, and his own swoon-worthy good looks. In that way, he also owes several doffs of the hat to one of my other favourite comic creations, Bertie Wooster from the Jeeves and Wooster stories by P G Wodehouse. 

The whole tone of the series – the mixture of the mischievous and the macabre – owes a weighty debt to A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Those books were the first that showed me that reading can be as thrilling as exhilarating as riding the most ill-tested of rollercoasters. 

One of my favorite things about THE BEAST AND THE BETHANY series is the relationships between Ebenezer and the beast and Ebenezer and Bethany. Can you share a bit about how those relationships lent to the humor?

The best kind of humour is driven in character – whether it’s a stand up comedian playing up aspects of their personality, sitcom characters who feel so familiar that they are friends, or narrators in books, whose unique voice is a character itself. 

My favourite part of writing the books has been writing scenes where Ebenezer, Bethany, and the beast are together. They are so different and – hopefully – their different approaches to life make them bounce off each other in an amusing way. 

I think about them most days – imagining how they would react in various situations. So for example, when I’m in a coffee shop, I’m imagining how each of them would order their drinks. Ebenezer would give extremely specific instructions on how he wishes his tea to be brewed. Bethany would pretend she has some terribly rude name, so the rest of the shop would laugh when the barista calls it out. The beast, meanwhile, would probably eat the coffee shop and everyone in it. The three of them have essentially built an apartment in my mind, and I’m not quite sure how to evict them. 

THE BEAST AND THE BETHANY series has some dark humor throughout. (For example, the beast wanting to eat a child in book one.) How did you land on the right amount of humor to avoid the story feeling too dark? Did any scenes get cut to maintain that balance?

I think comedy and horror have a lot of overlap, because they are both designed with a clear goal in mind. If you tell a joke and no one laughs; you’ve failed. If you write a horrifying scene and no one screams; you’ve failed. And because they are connected in that way, it makes them work well when they have chance to mingle together.

The jokes are more amusing, when they act as a moment of light relief in tense scenes. And the moments of horror sometimes feel more sinister when they’re done in a playful and amusing way. Whenever I have to cut scenes in earlier drafts, it’s normally because I haven’t got the balance quite right between the two. 

At the beginning of THE BEAST AND THE BETHANY Ebenezer is a morally gray character with some pretty big flaws. Can you tell us a bit about what went into creating Ebenezer’s character?

Rather embarrassingly, Ebenezer Tweezer is basically a version of myself which has much better hair, but much worse morals. Sadly, I have no magical beast to vomit me out potions or presents, and, even on my worse days, I’ve never considered serving up a child as a snotty snack for a hungry creature. However, I do share Ebenezer’s obsession with peculiar teas, questionable outfits, and bubble baths that go on for hours. 

I think characters are more interesting when they exist in a grey space between good and bad. Heroes are more relatable when they have flaws, and villains are more terrifying when you can see their point of view. 

Writing sequels can be tough. How did you ease your way into writing book two? Were books three, four, any five any easier to get back into?

The books I found easiest to write were The Beast and the Bethany and the fourth book, Child of the Beast. In these two books, the villain’s evil scheme was pretty clear from the beginning, which made the plotting easier. I’ve also learned that the longer that a story can cook inside my head before I start writing, the easier the whole process will be. 

Another thing I’ve noticed is that, with every book, the characters have taken more control over the direction of story. At the beginning, I felt reasonably in control of Ebenezer, Bethany and the beast, but, as the series has gone on, they’ve become complete divas. On the one hand, this makes writing scenes with them easier, because they just take control of the keyboard. But sometimes they refuse to do things that would make my life as an author a great deal easier. 

Kidlit HaHa Week is giving away one copy of THE BEAST AND THE BETHANY (US ONLY)

To enter, comment below with your favorite children’s book that uses dark humor before April 7, 2025 12pm ET.

Jack Meggitt-Phillips is an author, scriptwriter and presenter whose work has been performed at The Roundhouse and featured on Radio 4. His bestselling debut children’s series The Beast and the Bethany is translated into over 30 languages, and has had a major film deal announced.

The series has also won the West Sussex Children’s Book Award, the Alexandra Palace Children’s Book Award, the Stockport Children’s Book Award, the Fantastic Book Award, the Awesome Book Award, and the Channel Island Children’s Book Award. 

Jack is an experienced public speaker and workshop leader, having recently performed sold out performances at events including the Udderbelly, Norway’s International Festival of Literature, France’s Salon of Children’s Literature, and Italy’s ComicCon – Lucca Film and Games. For school visits and larger festival-style audiences, Jack runs creative writing workshops, author talks, and multi-school assemblies.