Paul Jennings (1) (1943–)

I felt bad going into this because I caught myself thinking, 'What if Paul can't sustain a novel-length story? What if short stories are his pace, and he runs out of steam?'

Dear past Lauren: you're an idiot.

This is a cracking read, with the usual great Jennings humour and creepiness and relatability. I initially thought that with the gang and the dare it would be 'A Good Tip For Ghosts' the extended dance remix. Again, past Lauren is an idiot. Nobody should listen to her. There's way more to this book than that.

The author's note at the end was a nice little bonus: 'I didn't make [character spoiler] an Aboriginal man because it is not my right to tell that story.' After talking with Ambelin Kwaymullina at last year's Continuum, the importance of Aboriginal culture and storytelling, down to who has the right to use which parts of language, has been on my mind and I appreciate Paul's respect of that.… (mere)

I never much liked Jennings and Gleitzman books. They were super popular with my classmates but I always just found them creepy.

Dawn and Rory hate each other. Unfortunately for them their parents, Jack (Dawn's dad) and Eileen (Rory's mum) are getting married. But they have to work together to save their parents when Rory finds his pets, the slobberers, are killing machines, sucking the life from anything they come into contact with and he put some in their honeymoon stew as a protest against their marriage.

This wasn't well written. All the characters are flat and there's a ton of backstory but all of which is lacking explanation. Dawn's mum apparently killed herself. On a bus. While other people were on it - one of whom was Rory. Rory's dad left his mum and him and never calls or writes or visits. There was no depth to the characters and every fact just brought up more questions.

And frankly I just didn't care. It was creepy and disgusting and I just wanted it to be over. 1 star.… (mere)