What I've Been Reading # 8

Hal Junior - The Secret Signal
By
Simon Haynes
Bowman Press 2011
ISBN978-1-877034-07-7

Hal Junior – The Secret Signal is the first children's book from WA author Simon Haynes. The book is a prequel to the humorous adult Sci-fi, Hal Spacejock series. Older Hal is good natured, confident in his abilities but an utterly clueless trouble magnet. It was interesting to glean a little insight into Hal’s formative years.

Hal Junior is good natured, confident in his own abilities, an utterly clueless trouble magnet, but he is a well meaning and likable dreamer. The story opens with Hal dangling upside down in a garbage chute by his elastic shoelaces trying to retrieve the only homework he has actually bothered to do. The antics continue from when his mother, the head of station research, gives him a secret signal for help, right to the climax where his earlier misadventures give an idea that might just save the day – or destroy the entire station…

This is a brilliant easy to read but exciting and funny story, perfect for reluctant boy readers. The humour is not as sophisticated and obscure as Simon’s adult series but I still caught myself chuckling out loud while reading the book. I can’t wait for the next book in the series.

Andy Griffiths - Robot Riot Tour

Author Visit.

Any children's authors who want to do author visits of schools would be well served by following along with Australia's #1 children's author, Andy Griffiths and taking notes.

Andy is an amazingly funny writer who takes mundane situations and twists them to levels of absurdity that kids can’t help laughing at. With book titles like; ‘The Day My Bum Went Psycho’ from the BUM series, ‘Just Disgusting’ from the JUST series and ‘The Pencil Of Doom’ from the SCHOOLING AROUND series, you can imagine how popular Andy’s books are with those reluctant boy readers.

Children can be hard critics at the best of times. And if they are not interested in what you have to say, they will let you know. From the moment he took the stage, Andy had a large audience of somewhat unruly upper primary kids eating out of his hands. His stories and extremely bad jokes left them in hysterics.

Andy talked about where he found his ideas. A lot of them involved exploring own fears, like his dread of escalators. He had the kids revealing their own secrets and fears with him. One boy’s fear of having his head peed on by possums ended up being a whole story on its own. (I wouldn’t be surprised to see that in one of Andy’s books some day.)

One of the main reasons for Andy’s visit to Bathurst was to promote his latest book in the SCHOOLING AROUND series, ‘Robot Riot’ in which - Henry discovers that the new student at the school, Roberta Flywheel is actually a robot bent on destroying everyone in the school. All he has to do now is convince his friends of the truth.

By the number of copies of the book I saw being carried out of the hall, I think the talk was very successful.

I haven’t read ‘Robot Riot’ yet but it is definitely next on my to read list.

Thanks Andy for a very entertaining visit.