Man-eaters and Bloodsuckers
Piranhas, pythons, parasites and people

Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Who isn’t! But where does fairy tale end and the truth begin? Man-eaters and Blood-suckers has the answer. It is packed with
gut-wrenching stories about everything that can bite, rip, squeeze, suck and maul, from the jungles of India to your own back yard. Get the lowdown on all the creepy crawlies that love to feast on you, inside and out. Discover how to stay alive in bear country, how to survive a big cat attack, how to keep clear of a shark’s jaws and find out who is eating who!

• terrifying tigers
• shocking shark attacks
• vampire bats
• the bear facts on grizzlies
• giant tapeworms
• shipwrecked cannibals…
• and much, much more

I learnt so much when I wrote Man-eaters and Bloodsuckers and not just about all the things that like to eat us. I learnt that looks can be deceiving and sometimes the things we are most scared of are not the things that should be worrying us. I learnt not to believe every story you hear until you’ve understood all the facts. I learnt that man is the most fearsome predator on the planet.

When I was a kid, I was always scared of things that bit. I hated the idea
of big scary creatures sinking their fangs into me so when I was working on coming up with an idea for a title in the True Stories series, writing about man-eaters seemed like a sure fire hit. But researching the information I needed to make sure the stories I was writing were really true meant I had to throw away a lot of my long held fears and misunderstandings. Did you know that piranahas are mostly vegetarian? That sharks don’t like the taste of human flesh? That the creature that poses the biggest threat to human life is the lowly mosquito?

Stories can be powerful things. They can change the way people think about the world. They can be used for good or evil purposes. There are so many misleading and untrue stories around about man-eating animals that I had to work quite hard at sifting the truth from all the fantasies. By the time I’d finished writing Man-eaters and Bloodsuckers, I’d changed my mind about a lot of stories I’d once thought were true.

When I was a kid, I used to have a recurring nightmare about being chased by the Big Bad Wolf. Even as an adult, if I was going to have a bad dream, you could count on there being something biting in it. Since writing Man-eaters and Bloodsuckers I’ve never had a bad dream about anything that bites. The only biting creature that wakes me up during the night these days are mosquitos.