Brand made his children's book debut in November 2014 with "Russell Brand's Trickster Tales: The Pied Piper of Hamelin". It is the first instalment of an intended series, featuring illustrations by Chris Riddell. In "The Guardian", reviewer Lucy Mangan noted: "The on-Brand need to be noticed is there on every page, his unwillingness to get out of the way of the story tripping the reader up at every turn" and adding that Chris Riddell's illustrations "give the book a beauty it does not deserve and a coherence the text does not deliver". Nicholas Tucker, in "The Independent", was even less impressed, noting the book's "wearingly offensive" language, and writing: