FernFolio » humour

Don’t Say That Word! by Alan Katz and David Catrow

fernfolio — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 22:10:56 +0000

When Michael gets home from school, and his mother asks him about his day, he regales her with stories about his classmates, stories that celebrate bodily functions. Michael tells his mother about the booger that comes to decorate the top of a birthday cookie, she responds with, “Don’t say that word!” Michael fairs no better when he recounts what happens when Don gulps down his cider too quickly, or when Ms. Grant, his teacher, steps into some unpleasantness in the school yard.
Even after some time on the time out chair, Michael continues to get into trouble with his accounts of Max’s upset stomach and the class’ art lesson. Eventually, his mother resorts to washing out the poor kid’s mouth with soap, before telling him to get into his pyjamas and get off to … In the end, his mother is not the only one who finds some words unacceptable!
Told in rhyme, Alan Katz’ humorous story about rude words slyly incites the reader to utter the words that Michael is banned from saying. Amusingly illustrated by David Catrow.
FernFolio

Such a Prince by Dan Bar-el and John Manders

fernfolio — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:12:37 +0000

The Once Upon a TIMES reports that Princess Vera is deathly ill, and that her father, the King, is frantic. Fortunately, Libby Gaberchik, fairy and healer, knows just what is wrong with the dear girl. Love. The princess is starved for it.
So Libby tells the king that Vera must eat three perfect peaches and marry within a week of eating them. Soon young men from all over have flocked to the castle, each bearing three peaches, but none of them are perfect peaches.
In a small cottage lives a poor widow with her three sons, Sheldon, Harvey and Marvin. Sheldon, the eldest, picks the three best peaches in their orchard and tries his luck with Princess Vera, but reckons without Libby Gaberchik, whom he meets in the forest that surrounds the castle. Sheldon’s rudeness proves to be his downfall, and he returns home in shame. Harvey fairs no better, so, finally, the youngest, Marvin, takes his chance.
Unlike his older brothers, Marvin is skinny and kind to a fault. When he meets Libby Gaberchik in the forest, he passes her test with flying colours and earns her quiet help in his quest to win Princess Vera’s hand in marriage, and bring his poor old mother to live with them in the castle.
Marvin is going to need all the help that Libby can give him, for the King fancies someone more polished and important than Marvin for his only child, and is prepared to do anything he can to prevent a marriage between them!
Told from Libby’s perspective, this fairy tale of Princess Vera and her kindly but rather hapless suitor, Marvin, is warmly engaging and fun. A terrific story about two young people, and the charmingly plain-speaking and unassuming fairy who steps in to help them. Lovely illustrations by John Manders!
FernFolio Editor

Chester by Mélanie Watt

fernfolio — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 21:02:25 +0000

When Mélanie Watt, the award-winning author and illustrator of Scaredy Squirrel, tries to write a book about a mouse, her story is taken over by a large tortoiseshell cat named Chester. Armed with a red marker, Chester packs the mouse onto an air plane destined for someplace far, far away, and moves into the story. Literally. When Mélanie tries to regain control of her mouse story, Chester outwits her, and soon the author-illustrator and the cat are engaged in a hilarious game of strategy and one-upmanship to get their story told!
Engagingly written by Mélanie Watt and Chester, this picture storybook about an unexpected character who runs amok, is funny, fast paced and sure to capture the hearts of both young and old!
Chester won the 2009 Blue Spruce Prize!
FernFolio Editor

My New Shirt by Cary Fagan and Dusan Petricic

fernfolio — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 22:19:17 +0000

David loves his Bubbie, and loves to visit her in her apartment above the Kuni Lemmel Bagel Shop. But he dreads going to see her on his birthday because each and every year, David’s Bubbie give him the same present for his birthday, a gift he neither wants nor appreciates. She gives him a stiff, white, collared shirt because, as Bubbie says, every boy needs a nice white shirt that makes him look like a “little gentleman.” How, David wonders, does a kid who thinks like him grow up to be an adult to thinks like that?!
David opens the box, and takes out the shirt, but, before he can try it on for his delighted Bubbie and parents, something unexpected happens, something that has everybody racing all over the neighbourhood in hot pursuit of the new shirt!
Written by the wonderful Cary Fagan and illustrated by the incomparable Dusan Petricic, this story about family and misguided presents is sure to become a classic!
FernFolio Editor

Swindle by Gordon Korman

fernfolio — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:58:51 +0000

Eleven-year old Griffin Bing is the Man with the Plan, the kid who can figure out a solution to every problem. But his parents are facing a financial disaster that seems to be beyond even his organizational cunning. His inventor father has come up with the SmartPick, a device that is sure to be a winner, and has quit his job and invested all of the family’s savings into developing a prototype. Too bad he hasn’t managed to find any investors; too bad an empty bank account has forced the Bings to put their house up for sale.
When Griffin comes up with the idea of camping out in a derelict, and possibly haunted, house on the eve of its demolition, only his best friend Ben shows up. With Ben curled up fast asleep in his sleeping bag, Griffin sets out to explore the old house and discovers an old baseball card hidden in the drawer of an abandoned desk. Closer examination of the card reveals that the picture on it is of Babe Ruth, one of the great legends of baseball, and Griffin starts to hope that, just maybe, the card will be worth enough to get his parents out of their financial mess. He takes the card to Palomino’s Emporium of Collectibles and Memorabilia, where the proprietor, one S. Wendell Palomino, informs him that he’s got a 1960’s reproduction of a Babe Ruth original baseball card and that it’s only worth about a hundred dollars, but offers him $120. Pocketing his half of the money, Griffin regrets that he cannot even give the $60 to his parents, since they will learn of his camp out in the old house.
Then Griffin happens to see a news item on television, and recognizes S. Wendell Palomino, who is announcing the discovery of a rare and extremely valuable Babe Ruth baseball card, which he plans to sell at auction where, estimates suggest, the card will sell for more than $1 million. It is then that Griffin Bing realizes that he’s been had, swindled out of a fortune, money that his family desperately needs if they are going to hang onto their house. With an initially very reluctant Ben, Griffin begins work on the most ambitious plan of his life, that of stealing his baseball card back from Palomino.
Vicious guard dogs, safes, alarm systems, nosy neighbours, directionally challenged couriers, the police, Griffin and his team of eleven-year old specialists take them all on and create the perfect plan. Or very nearly….
Swindle is a fast-paced adventure that combines moments of signature Gordon Korman humour with the bone-deep satisfaction of getting back at the bullies, be they classmates, crooked store owners, or city hall!
FernFolio Editor

You’re a Bad Man, Mr. Gum! by Andy Stanton

fernfolio — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:36:53 +0000

Mr. Gum lives in a great old disaster of a house in the village of Lamonic Bibber. A nasty, lazy old man with filthy habits, he hates housework, animals (other than insects) and most of the village people, except Billy William the Third, a butcher whose shop is as smelly and unpleasant as Mr. Gum’s house. But Mr. Gum’s garden is lovely – full of beautiful flowers, shrubs, trees and lawns. It’s lovely because of the bad-tempered fairy who lives in Mr. Gum’s bathtub and who hits Mr. Gum with a frying pan if he doesn’t keep it looking nice.
When a big friendly dog named Jake shows up in Lamonic Bibber, the residents are thrilled. They love Jake’s happy and exuberant nature, and look forward to his visits to their gardens, even though he tends to make rather a mess, because they believe those visits bring good luck. However, when Jake discovers Mr. Gum’s garden and starts paying daily visits to roll around in the flower beds and tear up the grass, Mr. Gum is furious. The daily messes have the bad-tempered fairy hitting Mr. Gum to get him out and working in the garden when all Mr. Gum wants to do is laze about and play Butcher Darts with Billy William the Third.
So Mr. Gum devises an evil plan to rid himself of Jake. Only a little girl called Polly (by her friends) can stop Mr. Gum, if she can convince Friday O’Leary to help her when he seems more interested in playing tennis.
You’re a Bad Man, Mr. Gum! is a hilarious adventure, full of quirky characters and told by an author who clearly has a highly developed sense of the absurd! A fun read for students from Grade 3 to 6, this book is reminiscent of the works of Roald Dahl!
FernFolio Editor

Things are Looking Grimm, Jill by Dan Bar-el

fernfolio — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:05:19 +0000

Eleven year-old Princess Jill, sister to King Jack and daughter to Mother Goose, is spoilt and impulsive and prone to trying to sneak out of doing her chores, but she’s also brave and smart and determined, so, when she receives a message from someone known only as F.G., urgently asking for her help in the nearby Kingdom of Grimm, she sets out immediately.
Accompanied only by a very contrary girl named Mary, whose negative outlook on life helps keep her focused, Jill makes her way across Grimm, discovering along the way that the girls and women of the land seem to have fallen into a trance that has them all enamoured of Prince Charming and determined to be chosen as his bride at an upcoming ball given by his parents, the King and Queen of Grimm. This enchantment has made allies of former enemies, including Gretel and the witch, and Snow White and her stepmother, and has caused Rapunzel to forget her noble prince and dream of marriage to Charming.
With the help of the men of Grimm, Jill and Mary find F.G., a fairy godmother and friend to Cinderella, and learn that the enchantment of girls and women is all part of a nefarious plan, on the part of a monster named Iron Hands, to steal the kingdom’s gold. As the hours tick away and the ball approaches, Jill and Mary must rescue Prince Charming, his parents, and the kingdom’s elves from the castle in which they are held prisoner, find a way to free the women of Grimm from their enchantment, and see to it that everyone does, in fact, get to live happily ever after!
Things are Looking Grimm, Jill is a clever and amusing story about the characters who inhabit the nursery rhymes and fairy tales of our childhood. Dan Bar-el has Jill and Mary and their friends jumping off the page and into our imaginations!
Things are Looking Grimm, Jill won the 2008 Silver Birch Express prize!
FernFolio Editor

The Frog Princess by E. D. Baker

fernfolio — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:42:38 +0000

Princess Esmeralda is the despair of her mother. Lacking in the social graces, clumsy and bored by self-absorbed suitors, she prefers exploring the flora and fauna of the swamp and visiting her aunt Grassina, a witch, to attending formal balls. When she trips and frightens away some grasshoppers in the swamp one day, a frog complains that she has deprived him of his dinner. Upon discovering that she is a princess, the frog asks for a small favour, a kiss to change him back into a prince. But, when she finally places her lips on those of the frog, something unexpected happens. Esmeralda is transformed into a frog herself and needs Eadric’s help to survive in her new body. Fortunately, Eadric proves to be a very chivalrous sort of frog, willing to show Emma how to swim and hop and catch flies, though he finds her initial ineptitude hilarious. He also shows her that a frog’s life can be a pleasant one, filled with twilight concerts of peepers and bullfrogs at the stream’s edge and mornings frolicking in the pond, just as long as you can find enough to eat and avoid being eaten!
But Emma wants to be human again, and persuades Eadric to go in search of the witch who cast the spell on him. Their search ends when a witch catches them and places them in a cage, ready to be used in a spell to give her everlasting youth and beauty. Fortunately, Emma makes friends with the other creatures held captive by the witch and, with their help, works a little magic of her own to free them all.
Emma’s and Eadric’s travels take them next through a magic forest, full of wonderful enchantments and hidden dangers, accompanied and, possibly, protected by a snake named Fang and a timid little bat named Li’l.
Fortunately, this is a fairy tale so in the end our friends live happily ever after, but not before they experience both excitement and terror, and learn some very important lessons about magic.
We have all read the fairy tale of the spoilt princess who agreed to invite a frog home in exchange for rescuing her golden ball from the bottom of the pond. In this story has been transformed by E. D. Baker, whose characters are endearing and believable and funny, and who proves that a good book is pure magic.
The Girls’ Book Club has chosen The Frog Princess as one of their second books of the year.
FernFolio Editor

Directed by Kaspar Snit by Carl Fagan

fernfolio — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 22:45:44 +0000

In this sequel to the wonderful Kaspar Snit, Eleanor and her brother Solly, a.k.a. Googoo Man, learn that their parents have decided to take a holiday and leave them at home with a nanny. Annoyed that she cannot go with her parents to Tuscany, Eleanor is certain that Mrs. Leer, the nanny, is going to be demanding and difficult. She is further frustrated to discover that, during their absence, her parents insist that she and Solly not fly, and flying, in the midst of adolescent restlessness and discontent, is Eleanor’s only pleasure. Her mother has given the ancient amulet, the secret that allows the Blande family to fly, to Mrs. Leer for safe keeping.
Fortunately, Mrs. Leer proves to be a stalwart, warm-hearted soul, and the kids love her from the start. Fortunately, during their parent’s trip to Italy, Eleanor and Solly can continue to enjoy their favourite television program, The Zoomers, about a family of flying super heros that bears a striking resemblance to the Blandes. Unfortunately, the television program’s producer is one I.M. Partcankiss, whose name can be rearranged to spell Kaspar Snit. Even more unfortunate, Kaspar Snit, evil genius, is hiding out as a television producer and planning his next villainous deed, robbing hundreds of thousands of innocent children of their allowance to rebuild his fortress and his secret army, and wrecking revenge upon the Blandes, who foiled his plan of world domination!
When Solly is captured by Kaspar Snit, the redoubtable Mrs. Leer and Eleanor must find a way to rescue him. Too bad Snit outfoxes them and takes them all captive. Too bad the evil genius wants Eleanor and Solly to teach him how to fly, because without the amulet no one’s leaving the ground!
Directed by Kaspar Snit is a fun story! It will be a hit with readers from Grade 4!
FernFolio Editor

Toby Tucker Dodging the Donkey Doo by Val Wilding

fernfolio — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:40:59 +0000

Toby Tucker has lived with foster parents Don and Evie Allen for three weeks and figures he may at last have found a family. Toby knows nothing about who he is and where he comes from. All he has to connect him to his past is an old chest full of torn pieces of paper and a note, addressed to him from someone named Gee, saying that the bits of paper are his family tree and that, if he can fit them together, he will learn who he is and when he came from.
When Toby matches Niko with leon, he becomes his ancestor, a young donkey driver named Nikoleon who lived in ancient Greece. As Niko, he gets a job leading his donkey across Greece to attend the Olympic games, and knows that, if he can keep his five donkeys from misbehaving, put up with the spoilt Chrysanthe’s nasty tricks, and please her rich grandfather Andreas, he may just be able to save Niko’s family from financial disaster!
Dodging the Donkey Doo, the second book of Toby Tucker’s adventures, will appear to readers from Grade 4, especially the boys!
FernFolio Editor