The Book of Not Entirely Useful Advice
A brand new collection of mostly brand new poems, written by me and illustrated and interrupted and expanded throughout in full colour by the magnificent Mini Grey.
If you’ve ever wondered what a sausage might be useful for, or how to not get eaten by tigers, or how to get a duck out of your soup, or the best place to not practice your juggling, or whether gravy makes a good perfume, or whether an octopus might make a good hat, or how to not get eaten by bears, or where to not stick a porcupine, or what to do with jelly, or how to stop your trousers from falling down, or how to not get eaten by crocodiles, or how to not be scared in bed when the house makes all sorts of odd noises in the middle of the night, or what to do with jelly (again), or whether to accept those manky old biscuits your granny’s found in the back of the cupboard, or how to tell the difference between an elephant and an evening at the theatre, or what silence sounds like, or how to tell the difference between blackbirds and bananas, or how to tell the difference between pencils and sausage rolls, or how to tell the difference between rocks, cakes and rock cakes… then, goodness me, this is the book for you!
Selected for inclusion in the International Youth Library White Ravens recommendations for 2021.
To order a signed copy, click the link below. It's £16.99 in the shops (it's a full colour, glossy, A4-ish sized hardback), but you can get from me for £16.50, including UK postage and packing (for overseas postage, contact me first).
Audiobook, read and performed and narrated and messed about with by A.F. Harrold
I went into a studio and read out the whole book, and read out a lot of Mini’s pictures, and added a bunch of extra words that aren’t in the written down book as I tried to explain what I was doing while reading out pictures and poems and hitting myself with the book. So, what I’m saying is, the audiobook version is a little bit different from the book, although it’s all in the same order and you can read along and turn the pages in time with me waffling and nattering and singing at you.
You can get it from Audible by clicking anywhere on this sentence.
You can also buy it from itunes by clicking anywhere on this sentence.
Below are some not very enlightening pictures of me during the recording, locked away in a glass box to keep the producer safe from my spittle. (If you flick your eyes back and forth between the two images a little bit of movement is introduced and you’ll get a sense of ‘being there’.)
