How to Turn Your Child Into a ninja-scientist-guitar-soloing-human rights champion in one easy step.

Last week I finished my first ever children’s novel, Zeb and the Great Ruckus. I don't want to give too much of the story away, but I can tell you it will feature the following:

 

This is a story for parents who aren’t white picket fence upper middle class starbucks and sunday paper trim the roses keeping up with the Joneses types to buy for their kids who will grow up and grab the future by the throat, look it in the eye and say  “Oi! You. Belong. To. ME.” I feel like 95% of children's media is aimed at the same demographic that watches bad Hollywood movies, listens to commercial radio and believes everything they read in Murdoch papers. This book is for everyone else. And there are rather a lot of you aren’t there?

        

if you read your kids this                   then they will turn out like this

You won’t find any of that saccharine cookie cutter cliche children’s crap in this book. Walt Disney wouldn’t touch this with a ten foot pole. Unless it was to beat it with said ten foot pole whilst screaming: 

“Dear God! It’s horrible! By

the ghost of Bambi’s mother

get it away from me!”

If your children read my book then it will dramatically increase their chances of never becoming a lifeless homogenised tv-shopping drone. Although if they start a psychedelic folk band and work in a tattoo parlour I claim no responsibility (but I will probably buy their album). Ideally, immediately after reading Zeb and the Great Ruckus they will dedicate their lives to becoming some sort of ninja-scientist-guitar-soloing-human rights champion.

                                                                                                                                                                                              

BEFORE

"I'm going to organise a protest against sweatshop labour in the morning, then work on my quantum physics paper before recording the soundtrack for the new Gus Van Sant film before bedtime. Hi-yah!"   

                                      

                AFTER

And now for the ardouous process of submitting to agents and publishers, which I feel can be best summed up as:

Comments

[Anna]

hey, don't diss the poky little puppy! he was a favourite of mine, and I turned out ok...
also, plz, get an agent and publisher fast - my cousins listen to miley cyrus and love twilight! even the little ones! they need HELP!!!

[Joshua Donellan]

Ok, maybe Poky isn't the worst of the bunch, but those damn golden books. SO sexist and SO racist. Such classic 50s whitebread values. Blech.

Just throw your cousins a few primus albums and a copy of "the Northern lights." That'll sort em out for the interim.