Weird school by Damian Callinan

Damian Callinan is an Australian comedian who has plied his craft on stages and screens… and now a children’s book. His quirky sense of humour is whacked and walloped within the school grounds of Wally Park Primary School to create a warped and bizarrely peculiar collection of yarns involving the strangest school Principal in the world and the assortment of talented and imaginatively formulated students. The result is a book that is a hotchpotch of silliness and madness, with students constantly needing to fix issues created by the Principal’s unusual choices and rules.

While this will be enjoyed by children who prefer humorous stories, it is sometimes baffling as it squeezes too many eccentricities into a small space – a student who is also an alien, another a shapeshifter, a 3-D printer that prints a copy of a teacher, a school tree with magical qualities, an Out-of-bounds area that creates clones… and the list goes on! Amongst the stories are school newsletter examples that reveal the disastrous rules created by the Principal and some naive and amusing cartoons.  For some readers aged 10+ this wacky book will appeal to their rule-stretching preferences even if some of the humour flies over their heads. Straight to the Library shelf!

Themes: School, Comedy.

Carolyn Hull