Funny Bones ed. by Oliver Phommavanh, Kate Temple and Jol Temple

Allen and Unwin, 2019. ISBN: 9781760524333.
(Age: 5+) Highly recommended. Funny Bones is one of the best compilations of stories I have read in a really long time!
It has 'over 100 stories for kids from Australia's bestselling authors, illustrators and funny people', and does not disappoint. It is a huge book, which could be quite overwhelming to some readers but upon opening and flicking through it is quickly evident that this book is filled with an array of stories of all different lengths. Some are just text (but only a few pages long), some have small funny pictures and some are humorous cartoons!
The book has been edited by Kate and Joel Temple and Oliver Phommavanh, and is so clever in the order of stories, poems, and cartoons through out the book. My 9 year old son and I read this book, and we loved the different text types and didn't feel the need or want to flick past stories to find something else.
The authors who contributed to this book are some of Australia's finest, including Andy Griffiths, Zoe Foster-Blake, Terry Denton, Sally Rippin, Josh Pyke and Madeline West. Readers are going to be very familiar with lots of the names, drawing them into the text with familiarity and then they will certainly have trouble putting it down after they begin reading all the hilarious tales.
The stories are all very funny, lots were even laugh out loud material! There is toilet humour, funny poetry, hilarious cartoons and scary stories. We particularly liked 'Punbelievable or: a series of punfortunate events' by Fiona Katauskas (who doesn't love a pun!), 'Disgusting Things' by Josh Pyke (a poem fit for the stinkiest of children!), and 'Dr William's big, bad Dad joke word search' by Sean Williams (which is really a word search with answers completing all the terrible Dad jokes).
I could go on and on about our favourites but truely we really did enjoy all of the stories. This book would suit an 8-9 year old reader as it has a range of text types that require a higher level of comprehension knowledge, but children as young as 5 would find many of the stories funny when read out loud by a parent or older sibling. We give this book 5 out 5 and think it would make an awesome holiday book, or present for any fart-loving friend!!!
Lauren Fountain