Untwisted: the story of my life by Paul Jennings

Allen & Unwin, 2020. ISBN: 9781760525828. 321p. hbk.
(Age: 12+) Autobiography. Paul Jennings grabs events in his life as a counterpart to stories he has written. The master of the quirky and hilarious short story patches together the trajectory of his life, his learning curve as a literacy teacher and writer with selected elements of his personal life. In addition to his first successful foray into volumes of humorous stories with surprise twists, Jennings has written some of the most memorable scenes in children's novels and excelled at the demanding genre of television script writing.
His own misadventures as a youth, a husband, father and a celebrity provide the origin stories of his narratives. His strained relationship with his father is not atypical of his generation but revealing his dark fantasies to his readers brings us into his trust. To reinforce his objectivity, his self-awareness extends to collaboratively consulting the would-be players in his life story before describing them in print. Equally, he has never been solely motivated by the magical realism and laugh-out-loud comedy of his narratives. He has always tapped into his inner child writing his fears and feelings down to empathise with the sheer vulnerability and the getting (or not) of literacy, life experience and resilience that is every child's journey.
One amusing anecdote from a lecture to Teacher Librarians wasn't explored but he relates a number of experiences from his teaching and book tours. His style is not traditional in categorising the jigsaw pieces of his life, metacognitively casting doubt on his own interpretation literally and sustaining that breakdown of the fourth by alternating fact and fiction. The dictum of Socrates is satisfied by Untwisted i.e. The unexamined life is not worth living. Rather what Jennings has attempted to do in this reflective triumph, is to show that "Our lives are nothing if not lessons to others". Jennings was never going to write his own story unpunctuated by his magical realism that was stranger than life, nor omit real events that were stranger than fiction. Flexibility and innovation is still his lesson and humour is the door to guide disengaged students into lifelong readers.
Children, adults gratefully adored for decoding his stories out-loud, and many a flummoxed teacher librarian will be enchanted by the recounts Paul Jennings has selected in this self-portrait. Oft spurned by elite literary accolades, Paul Jennings preferred popular success. A biography commands substance and the hardback cover pays homage to the breadth of his literary forays via the Round the Twist motif. THE most successful ACTF program to this day, the little lighthouse stands sentinel - a symbol of one of the greatest living storytellers.
Deborah Robins