★★★☆☆ The Forgotten Creation, by Guy Bass, Pete Williamson (illustrator)
I admired it more than I enjoyed it
The Forgotten Creation
Guy Bass, Pete Williamson (illustrator)
I admired it more than I enjoyed it
Last Saturday, 1-Nov-2025, I saw the new animated film Stitch Head. Immediately afterward I bought the book The Forgotten Creation and read it. This review will combine my impressions of the book and the movie, which were similar.
The Forgotten Creation is the first book in Guy Bass‘s Stitch Head series. (The Forgotten Creation is also published under the title Stitch Head. Perhaps it has different titles in the UK and the USA? Just a guess...) The boylike thing on the cover is named Stitch Head, for obvious reasons, and is the forgotten creation referred to in the title. He was created years ago by Mad Professor Erasmus, who lives in Castle Grotteskew outside the town of Grubbers Nubbin. The professor promised to be his best friend, but promptly forgot all about him in his enthusiasm for his next creation.
The professor has continued creating monsters ever since. Like Stitch Head, each monster is the professor’s “Greatest Creation” until he begins work on the next, typically a matter of minutes. Then the professor forgets the last monster. Castle Grotteskew is therefore packed with assorted monsters. Stitch Head took an empty room in the castle for himself and and looks after the monsters.
If you’re like me, you’re thinking something like, “That isn’t funny! It’s just sad.” And that was perhaps my biggest problem with both the film and the book. To me they felt so drenched in sadness as not to be very amusing.
A traveling circus (more of a Freak show, really) directed by Fulbert Freakfinder comes to Grubbers Nuggin. It’s a sad, pitiful little show with little of interest. So when the people of Grubbers Nuggin tell Freakfinder that they are inured to frights by the monsters of Castle Grotteskew, he immediately senses a commercial opportunity. He visits the Castle and importunes Stitch Head to join his show. I will not spoil by telling you how the plot develops from there (it is somewhat different in the book and the movie), but Things Happen and are eventually resolved.
You would naturally hope for an uplifting resolution, but that’s not what we get. In the end everything feels almost as sad as in the beginning.
I will say, though, that a lot is done right, both in the book and in the movie. I found a lot to admire in both. But -- you’ve probably had the experience of reading a book or watching a movie and thinking, “I liked that... That was well done...” yet somehow at the end finding that the appreciation was all intellectual, and that you didn’t enjoy it very much. That’s how I felt about Stitch Head. I will not be reading any more of the books.