The reviews are in… Some recent reviews of my book of short stories My Life and Other Stuff I Made Up.
(Highly recommended)
‘What an exhilirating ride it is to follow the misadventures of Tom Weekly … Delightful and funny. Bancks has beautifully captured the essence of boyhood. Tom is a typical 21st-century schoolboy, following in the fine tradition of Ginger Meggs… Best of all, it made me laugh.’
From ‘Kids Book Review‘
Are you ready to laugh? Yes? Good. Because you won’t be able to help yourself once you open this cover.
Tom Weekly loves to write and draw, so he puts together lots of short stories and drawings and other crazy stuff that comes to his imagination.
With a passion for funny stuff, the big questions (like, why do dogs eat poo?), lists and quirky captions, Tom is kind of weird – but in a good way. And a bit of a gross way, too.
Boys will love this book. Fans of Griffiths, Gleitzman and Jennings will be thrilled to have this book in their collection.
Author Bancks doesn’t skip a beat as he writes from his character Tom’s perspective, and illustrator Gordon adds his usual funny and clever drawings to it all.
What a great book.
DMag review excerpt:
‘A serious dose of pant-wetting, cringe-worthy short stories and we love ’em! Just don’t read it if you like the taste of Vegemite. It’ll never taste the same again.’
Reading Time review:
**BANCKS, Tristan (text) Gus Gordon (illus.) My Life & Other Stuff I Made Up Random House, 2011 200pp $15.95 pbk ISBN 9781864718171 SCIS 1513192
The cover of this book of nine short stories is reminiscent in design of the Penny Pollard series, with cartoon ink sketches, bandaids and a sticker on the cover. There are wide margins, ink sketches and varied fonts to break up the text and appeal to emerging young readers. The comic style illustrations and ideas lists throughout extend and enhance the text and make it a visual experience rather than a series of stories to be read. Each story involves Tom’s family and friends and most have indefinite endings that allow the reader to visualise several alternate endings. The topics are slapstick, funny and gross in places, with a hot dog eating competition, tough nans in battle, an evil swooping magpie and a gruesome scab story to mention a few. The voice of Tom is convincing and conveys a good sense of family and pets in each story. The themes of the importance of friends, coming to terms with girls, mothers who go on dates and dealing with bullies are explored. There are website details and an email address for readers to send their own stories, messages and ideas. Suitable for 8-12 year olds. JL
And here’s Author Oliver Phommavanh’s review in Buzz Words Magazine
