A Good Read
Delete This At Your Peril Neil Forsyth
You know those spam emails you receive on a daily basis? What do you do with them? Click and delete? Wonder idly if there really is a long-lost relative somewhere who has left you his entire fortune? Swear at the screen? Most likely a combination of all three. Well, here is another answer. Reply.
Forsyth’s ‘hero’, Bob Servant, does just that. Every email is read carefully and replied to just as carefully.
The ensuing
correspondence is detailed in this book, and it is laugh-out-loud funny from beginning to end.
Each of the initial scenarios will be familiar to anyone who has ever noticed the spam piling up in their mailbox. The fi rst is from ‘His Royal Highnest (sic). Jack Thompson’, who off ers Bob 20% of a $75m fortune. Bob manages to haggle upwards, eventually requesting four live lions, preferably ones that can talk, as his share of the profi ts. This is followed by a long saga involving a kidnapped postman; more than one ‘relationship’ with nubile Russians; a misunderstanding which sees Bob fl ying to Dhaka, Bangladesh rather than Dakar, Senegal and a long-distance relationship between Bob’s female alter-ego Bobby, and Benjamin, who is desperate to see a photograph of his conquest.
The exchanges become more and more ridiculous
the longer they continue, as
Forsyth changes Bob’s stories and demands while drawing the correspondents on in the hope of eventual fi nancial gain. Bob’s own history is gradually pieced together too, with footnotes to confi rm that he is of course, a compulsive liar.
The book can be read all at once, or dipped into.
Some of the language is not for the
faint-hearted, but it will make you laugh. And it will possibly make you look at those emails a little diff erently...
20 occasionally parents
Just Imagine Pippa Goodhart and Nick Sharratt
This is the new book from the author and illustrator behind the perennial favourite ‘You Choose’ - so popular in some houses that resort to hiding it
in the hope of a night off . ‘Just Imagine’ does exactly what it says in the title - off ers children a chance to use their imagination to develop their own stories, dreams and possibilities.
Each page is richly illustrated with a series of possibilities - being very BIG or very small for example. Children can read the text and then decide from the pictures what they would like to be, and what they would not! They can go back in time, be magical, live underground, in the air, or even under the sea. At the end, they can choose their dreams for that night.
This is a book that promotes talk and play as well as imagination.
play the diff erent scenarios, pretending to be a wild animal or a pet, or choosing and trying out their favourite vehicle. There are hundreds of ‘What if...’ questions that could be asked, and older children can use the book as a starting point for their own story writing.
Destined to be a classic as quickly as its predecessor, this is one for kids of all ages.
To advertise in thewire t. 07720 429 613 e.
the.wire@btinternet.com Readers can role
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