My Life and Other Exploding Chickens Read online

  Ten Reasons Why You Should Not Read the Other Three My Life Books:

  1. They’re full of dum stuff and will make you even stupider than you are now.

  2. They feature angry teachers and parents, which is totally unrealistic because teachers and parents are never angry.

  3. They tell more stories about Stella Holling, the girl who’s always trying to kiss me – and kissing girls is weird and sick and wrong.

  4. They document all my failed businesses, like my backyard theme park, my tooth mine and my pop-up school playground freak show.

  5. They feature my weirdest body parts. (I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to write stories about my freaky four-toed foot, my big fat hairy birthmark and my appendix being ripped out of my body, but I did.)

  6. Some stories will seriously mess with your mentals, like the day I woke up and everything was hovering.

  7. Your teachers will probably take them off you and tell you to read something more intelligent, like Just Stupid! or Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy Part One: The Night of the Nasty Nostril Nuggets.

  8. Reading is good for you. Teachers and parents love it when you read, because it makes you smart, and then you’ll get a good job and make lots of money and become famous and contribute to society. Which means that, when you read, parents and teachers are winning. Which means that you are losing, so you should not read in order to become more dum, and then you win. Ha!

  9. My Life & Other Stuff I Made Up has a story about my nan and Jack’s nan fighting in a back-alley brawl. It has the second-most disgusting end to a story in the history of children’s literature. (The grossest is the story about Brent Bunder’s sore in My Life & Other Stuff that Went Wrong.)

  10. You should be reading nourishing stuff, like Dickens and Shakespeare and Emily Brontë, not the ravings of a dum kid like me, who can’t even spell ‘dum’.

  Acknowledgements

  There are many people who contribute in big and small ways to the making of a book. Thanks to my first readers, Huxley and Luca Bancks and Claire and Raph Atkins for your insights, encouragement and humour. Thanks to Paul McMahon for brainstorming fat cats with me. And Amber Melody for inspiring me.

  I love interacting and collaborating with the readers of my books. I often throw a new story idea out to students when I visit a school and we brainstorm ideas together. Thanks to all the teachers, librarians, booksellers and readers who support me but especially to Mountain Creek SHS years 7 & 8 students, St Andrews Lutheran College, Noosa District State High School, Flinders CCC years 4, 5 and 6, Grand Avenue SS year 4, St Dominic’s PS, Huntingtower School year 4, Moomba Park PS, Beaconhills College Berwick, Genesis Christian College, Frank Partridge VC PS, Nambucca Valley Community Christian School, Caulfield Grammar Junior School, MacGregor SS, Aitken College year 6, Springfield Anglican College, St Bernardine’s PS, Brisbane Boys’ College year 5, Shailer Park SHS year 7, St Josephs Terrace year 7, Sandy Beach PS, Newington College Lindfield and St Gabriels PS year 6.

  Thanks for special input online and in sessions from Abbey, Ansh, Isobelle, Chloe, Amelia, Aidan, Ryan, Hayden, Tynan, William, Mitchell, Dr Carpet, Robert, Tara, Jacob, Faith, Harmony, Isaac, Rob, Layla, Amy, Elijah, Fjord, Kaleb, Jed, Tyler, Trinity, Abby, Ely, Rachel, Olivia, Lauren, Mehret, Joel, Hunter, Charlotte, Tim, Hayden, Maddie, Elly, Adrian, Ryan, Amelia, Kayla, Kai, Laura, Lilya, Ruby, Xavier, Isaac, Jonah, Ray, Alana, Katie, Tony, Dominique, Shaniah, Ruby, Hugo, Finn, Banjo, Maja, Nicholas, Miriam, Reuben, Tansy, Grace, Sophie, Christopher, Felix, Daniel, Meg, Sophia, Max and Jayde.

  Thanks to LitVids book trailer participants and the 2015 Splendour in the Grass brainstormers. And to Cathy Shay, Tamara Rodgers, Natalie LaRocque, M Fenely, Deborah Hogg and Demelza Dean for insights into librarian life.

  And a huge thank you to Anthony Blair and Jo Butler at Cameron’s and the amazing team at Penguin Random House Australia who help make the My Life series as weird, funny and gross as it can be and who help put my books into readers’ hands: Zoe Walton, Brandon VanOver, Julie Burland, Dot Tonkin, Zoe Bechara, Angela Duke and Mary van Reyk.

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Tristan Bancks is a children’s and teen author published in Australia and the US. His background is in acting and filmmaking. His books include the My Life series, Two Wolves and the Mac Slater books. My Life & Other Stuff I Made Up has been nominated for YABBA and KOALA children’s choice awards. Tristan is excited by the future of storytelling and inspiring others to create. Find out more and chat to Tristan at www.tristanbancks.com

  Gus Gordon has written and illustrated over 70 books for children. He writes books about motorbike-riding stunt chickens, dogs that live in trees, and singing on rooftops in New York. His picture book Herman and Rosie was a 2013 CBCA Honour Book. Gus loves speaking to kids about illustration, character design and the desire to control a wiggly line. Visit Gus at www.gusgordon.com

  About Tristan Bancks and Room to Read

  Tristan Bancks is a committed writer ambassador for Room to Read, an innovative global non-profit that has impacted the lives of ten million children in ten developing countries through its Literacy and Girls’ Education programs. Room to Read is changing children’s lives in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zambia – and you can help!

  In 2012 Tristan started the Room to Read World Change Challenge, raising $20,000 in collaboration with Australian school children to build a school library in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Since then Tristan, his fellow writer–ambassadors and kids in both Australia and Hong Kong have raised another $60,000 to buy 60,000 books for children in low-income countries.

  For more information or to join this year’s World Change Challenge, visit http://www.tristanbancks.com/p/change-world.html, and to find out more about Room to Read, visit www.roomtoread.org.

  Books by Tristan Bancks

  My Life & Other Stuff I Made Up

  My Life & Other Stuff that Went Wrong

  My Life & Other Massive Mistakes

  My Life & Other Exploding Chickens

  Two Wolves

  Mac Slater, Coolhunter

  Mac Slater, Imaginator

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Penguin Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  My Life and Other Exploding Chickens

  9780857985323

  First published by Random House Australia in 2016

  Text copyright © Tristan Bancks, 2016

  Illustration copyright © Gus Gordon, 2016

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted.

  A Random House Australia book

  Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  Random House Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Author: Bancks, Tristan

  Title: My life and other exploding chickens / Tristan Bancks; illustrated by Gus Gordon [electronic resource]

  ISBN: 978 0 85798 532 3 (ebook)

  Series: Bancks, Tristan. My life; 4

  Other Authors/Contributors: Gordon, Gus, illustrator

  Dewey Number: A823.4

  Cover and internal illustrations by Gus Gordon
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  Cover and internal design by Astred Hicks, designcherry