About the Author

Paul Jennings worked as a special-education teacher before becoming a full-time writer. He has been voted 'favourite author' by children in Australia over forty times and has won every children's choice award in Australia. His books, including Undone!, Unreal! and Tongue-Tied! are hugely popular and he has sold more than 6.7 million books worldwide.

Reviews

Gr 4-8-- A skeleton, a ghost, and an ice-cream man are just a few of the fascinating characters readers will meet in this collection of short stories from Australia. Imagine a boy's fear at finding himself face-to-face with the ghost of a man who died in the outhouse, or another boy's worries over having to say ``without a shirt'' at the end of every sentence he utters--that is, until he reunites all the bones from a skeleton. New pink underwear with fairies on it is the source of one boy's great embarrassment until he discovers a just-as-new surge of superhuman powers. Jennings has found the perfect formula for the scary and supernatural sprinkled with just the right touch of hilarity. Both the vocabulary and a terse, journalistic style coupled with a frequent first-person point-of-view make this a natural for reluctant readers and storytellers. If Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Lippincott, 1981), and Leach's The Thing at the Foot of the Bed (Philomel, 1987), and Whistle in the Graveyard (Puffin, 1982) are hot ticket items, don't miss out on the fun here. --Jeanne Marie Clancy, Upper Merion Township Library, King of Prussia, PA