Tag Archives: Humour

How did the pages of our book go missing?

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Tristan Bancks always encourages his readers to write about things that happen to them so I’m writing a story about what happened to our copy of Tristan’s latest book…

A few weeks ago as you know, I went along to an Author Afternoon Tea at The Little Book Room. I was excited to have our copy of Tristan Bancks’ latest book My Life and Other Exploding Chickens signed for our library.

Three nights later on the Sunday night, I snuggled up on my couch to read Tristan’s new book before everyone else at school got their hands on it and I wouldn’t be able to borrow it for months! I laughed and groaned as I read Tom Weekly’s stories. I was reading ‘Death by Clown’ and feeling sorry for Tom at the circus and his fear of clowns when I reached page 78 where Giggles the Clown had control of the remote control and was driving Tom towards a ring of fire and to my horror I discovered the story skipped to page 85!!! Oh no! Pages were missing! Who was going to win the battle of Tom Weekly versus Giggles the Clown??

At first I wondered if Tristan was playing a trick on his readers by leaving the last few pages out of his story. Then I looked a little closer and the pages hadn’t been left out, they had been RIPPED out of the book! How did that happen? Who would do that to a book? Leesa at The Little Book Room was as perplexed as me and kindly offered to replace our book.

In the LRC that week I told the Year 3-6 classes about the mystery of the missing pages and we all wondered why someone would rip the pages out. We had fun listening to ‘Sit Where You Knit’ (some of us with grimacing faces and tears in our eyes) before I posted the book back. I then rushed out to buy another copy of the book so we would have two copies, but more importantly I had to see if Tom beat Giggles and also finish reading the remaining stories! (You can now borrow the book to find out too).

On Saturday morning the mystery of our missing pages was solved! I watched the Kids’ WB show and their interview with Tristan Bancks at The Little Book Room. Adrian Beck, Shane Crawford and the Kids’ WB team had fun disguising Tristan so he could prank some kids in the book shop….Tristan was hilarious!

Some of the pranks Tristan did included ripping a copy of his new book in half, dropping an ‘original’ Wimpy Kid picture ‘accidentally’ into a fish bowl and ripping pages out of his book to eat! Yes he RIPPED pages out of his book! I laughed and laughed when I realised THAT must have been the book I picked up and bought and asked Tristan to sign!! What were the chances of me picking up that book?

The mystery of the missing pages in our book has been solved and who would have thought it was the author who was the culprit! Now we have our own fun story to tell about My Life and Other Exploding Chickens….

#ReadingIsFun

The 52-Storey Treehouse @ the Melbourne Arts Centre

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The 52-Storey Treehouse play 

This is a play by Richard Tulloch adapted from the best-selling book The 52-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton.

When: April 1-17

Where: The Playhouse Theatre at the Melbourne Arts Centre

Definitely a ‘must see’ for fans of Andy and Terry. Click HERE for details. 

Elephant & Piggie by Mo Willems

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This term the Year Ones have had lots of fun reading our Elephant & Piggie books by Mo Willems. It has also been a fun way to learn about speech bubbles and how exclamation marks help you to read with expression. 

Mo Willems’ latest Elephant & Piggie book is called I Really Like Slop! Mo made a funny book trailer for his new book that made the Year Ones very glad that they weren’t the food critics for his Slop!

The Year Ones chose ingredients to write a recipe for their own Slop and then they each added one of their ingredients for a class Slop recipe. You can read their class Slop recipes, but you may not want to try eating them! 

Slop Recipe by 1C        Slop Recipe by 1GC        Slop Recipe by 1MB

Have fun with Elephant & Piggie and Pigeon on their website by clicking on the picture below…

Do you have a favourite Elephant & Piggie book?

David Walliams @ The Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne

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It was an absolute treat to see David Walliams at The Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne along with lots of very enthusiastic children holding copies of their favourite books.

 

You could feel the excitement in the air as we waited for David to appear on stage to talk with Meshel Laurie. David Walliams is very tall. He has a rich, deep voice, a very proper English accent and is very funny!

 

David began by telling us that it is a thrill to write children’s books and a wonderful responsibility. He likes that books last a long time and that they can be treasured (and you can keep writing as you get old!). He believes he is very lucky that his books have been illustrated by Quentin Blake and Tony Ross who help bring his characters to life. David has written TV shows but he wasn’t sure he if he could write books. (I’m sure his readers are very glad he gave it a go!) Today, David Walliams is regularly called “The New Roald Dahl”. His favourite Roald Dahl book when he was growing up was ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’.

Writing Tips….

David finds ideas anywhere and everywhere and always has a notebook handy to record his ideas

When he writes, David thinks of how he saw the world when he was a 12 year old boy

David says it’s a good idea to create a really good villain for your stories. The dreadful Aunt Alberta in Awful Auntie is his latest villain. We laughed out loud as he read how Aunt Alberta raised and trained her owl Wagner who is very much her ‘baby’ and they even wear matching pyjamas!!

 Did you know…

David Walliams’ own grandmother was the idea for his book Gangsta Granny

His character Raj is based on David’s own newsagent owner just up the road from him

David’s favourite book that he has written is Mr Stink. (He surprised himself that he could write a tender story!)

David has met the Queen four times. He doesn’t know if the Queen knows she is in his book Gangsta Granny!

David plays the Prime Minister in the Mr Stink movie

Mr Stink is coming to Sydney as a stage production in 2016

Fans of David Walliams will be very excited to hear that he is currently working on his next book about a boy who helps his grandfather escape from a high security old people’s home…sounds like another fun adventure to me!

Click on the books below to visit The World of David Walliams

Do you have a favourite book/s by David Walliams?

More adventures for Terry Denton’s crazy fish, Gasp!

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The Year Four students have recently completed a Character Study of Terry Denton’s crazy fish called Gasp.

The Year Fours enjoyed listening to Gasp’s crazy adventures and have explored the ways Terry created humour in both the text and illustrations.  They also focused on the ways Terry draws Gasp and how he uses Gasp’s eyes, eyebrows, mouth and fins to convey his expressions and then practised themselves. After brainstorming possible titles the Year Fours then created their own crazy adventures for Gasp by designing a front cover with an eye-catching title, intriguing byline and they also wrote a short blurb for the adventure.  Here are a few of their front covers…