Andy Griffiths is coming back to Book and Paper to release his latest book. 77957 Picture: DAMJAN JANEVSKI
By VANESSA CHIRCOP
ONE of Australia’s most popular children’s authors, Andy Griffiths, will be doing a signing at Book and Paper next week to release his new book ‘Just Doomed’.
Griffiths, who is best known for the ‘Just’ series, spoke to Star last week about returning to the series.
“This is a return to the Just series which is the initial series I started with, Tricking, Annoying, Stupid, Crazy, Disgusting,” he said.
“Then I thought I needed to break away from this series for awhile and The Day My Bum Went Psycho came out at that point.
“But audiences never stopped loving the ‘Just’ series and so we did a sixth in 2007 called ‘Just Shocking’ and that was really well received.”
The popular series of funny, short stories are told through the eyes of the mischievous young Andy, a regular practical joker.
Griffiths admits when he first started writing the series 15 years ago not everyone was ready to jump on board with Andy always getting up to no good.
“I have an enormous amount of support from teachers and parents these days,” he said.
“In the beginning there was a lot of misunderstanding and suspicion.
“But over the years they’ve come to realise the main effect of the book is to make the kids laugh and get excited about reading and also I point out to them that no evil character ever prospers.
“And Andy, for everything bad he tries it ends up rebounding twice as bad on him.”
The Williamstown resident, who is no stranger to the Ferguson St bookshop, said he was excited about returning to Book and Paper to meet his young readers.
“The signings and the talks are tremendously important,” he said.
“I’ve always loved entertaining kids even when I was a kid.”
Griffiths said it was great that after all these years kids still love getting their books signed.
Despite his more than 20 books, some even making the New York Times bestseller list, winning more than 50 children’s choice awards, being adapted to a television cartoon series and selling more than five million copies worldwide – Griffiths has no plans to retire.
Andy Griffiths will be at Book and Paper after school on Friday 23 March. For more information call 9397 7784.
