A Bad Gorilla Day

Are you having a Grumpy, Bumpy, Gurgly, Whirly, Bad Gorilla Day?

Have no fear! Grumps gorilla will show you how he conquers a bad gorilla day like a champ, not a chimp.

So take a walk on the wild side, learn some new tricks and tips that are sure to turn even your whirliest of days into a Great Gorilla Day!

‘A Bad Gorilla Day, But, A Great Gorilla Life.’

A Bare Chronicle of Existence

On the very same day as his brother, Arnold enrolled to serve in WW1. He signed up for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves and in April 1915 set sail on HMS India. A few short months later, he found himself floating in the North Sea. This is his story and the story of the men who found themselves interned in Norway for the remainder of the war. It is a story of loneliness and love. Of conflict and of isolation. It is a story from WW1 that is rarely told but one that deserves to be.

A Bear Called Bruno

Bruno is a big, old, kind and handsome bear who has six children and two grandchildren!

They all live in the wilderness amongst hundreds of trees and bushes alongside a fast-flowing river. Life is good until one day when Bruno sees his granddaughter, Coco, looking sad, standing alone on the riverbank.

When she says everything is OK, Bruno goes about his day as usual. But later that afternoon when he passes by the river again, he notices Coco is still there, and has salt marks coming down from her eyes.

He knows something is wrong! It’s not until he visits Coco’s school that he finds out Coco is being bullied. After Bruno speaks with her teachers and with the parents of the naughty bears, school life returns to normal for Coco… and for the bullies.

Join Bruno to learn about why bullying is wrong.

A Bedtime Mystery

“Oh no, can you smell that odour? That smell must belong to an ogre! Yes, an ogre with a stinky smelly toe. Who thinks everyone is not a friend, but foe?”

Nigel’s imagination always goes wild at bedtime. Except tonight, a brave Nigel is armed with a flashlight to explore sounds, shadows, and even smells in the night.

Read along with this whimsy bedtime story and discover that imagined witches, ogres and even judo trained dingoes are not what they seem.

A Being Otherwise

Wayne Hrovat is a quintessential cog-in-a-wheel; at forty-one, he has worked as an accountant in the bowels of Ford Motor Company for fifteen years. He is unmarried and lives with his ailing eighty-something mother.

He is also mildly schizophrenic.

When downsizing costs him his position, he takes a consulting job at a manufacturing plant in rural Michigan and discovers that the town has a dark history of unsolved murders and lost persons. He soon finds that he is both an outsider and an integral part of the continuing nightmare.  

As the story progresses, it becomes clear that his damaged psyche has been annexed by an opportunistic demon, and the two mental states joust inside until the climactic ending.

A Bird Called Swoopy

Swoopy is a black and white magpie who lives high up in a gum tree with his Mum and Dad, just near a golf course.

One day when his parents are away finding food, he sees a pretty pink golf ball plop along the green grass below their nest. He flies down, picks it up, and takes it back up into the nest. He hears a man shouting something but doesn’t think anything’s wrong?

When his parents come home, they tell him it is wrong to take things that don’t belong to you, and they push the ball back out of the nest down onto the ground. But the next day, Swoopy sees another ball, and he can’t resist! What happens next?

Join Swoopy to learn why stealing is wrong.

A Bit of Good Luck

A young man slings his duffel bag over his shoulder and begins a journey of a lifetime.

In this true story, young Frank learns more in a day than all his life up to that point but, ironically, he’s left with more questions than answers! Do lobsters whistle? Are sleep and driving mutually exclusive?

Now, over 50 years later, Frank recalls that day, the highs and lows, the stops and starts and the emotional end to his odyssey. With his mission to meet up with his father at the opposite end of Ireland, this funny, yet poignant story paints a landscape that is fading over time and will leave you wondering where life’s true characters have gone. Have they really disappeared? Or are they waiting patiently, thumbs out, waiting to be picked up again?

Readers will never predict the trials and tribulations of Frank McGurk in 1960s and ’70s Ireland – neither did Frank.

Where exactly is no man’s land? Was the smuggling run ‘a washing machine too far’? And what were Frank’s true dealings with the oil sheikhs from the Middle East?

Potholes without the plot holes, A Bit of Good Luck (and other short stories) evoke a bygone era where a journey was an adventure, and the open road was an open mic for every character to stand up and take a bow.

A Bite-Sized Pirate

Have you ever wondered if the pirates in your dreams,

Are really all that big? Really all that mean?

What if there was a secret? A passcode you could roar,

That would shrink these scary scallywags, till they were feared no more!

“Yo ho, climb aboard, me hearties, as we set sail and discover the decades-old secret that will keep you safe from the one-eyed pirates who sail the open seas as you sleep.

For, the passcode be yours to find, the passcode be yours to keep!”

Savvy?

A Blessing And A Curse

These poems invoke waves of emotions, pulling you in before spitting you out – exhausted, and never the same as you were before. They will open old wounds and help to heal new ones. They will force you to confront your own experience and that of those around you. These poems helped repair my soul and regain my spirit through heartbreak, abuse, mental illness, and loss. I hope they can do the same for you.

In a sea of darkness, know that you are not alone, and that it’s okay to not be okay.

A Book by its Cover and other Poems

Whether or not you are a fan of poetry, A Book by Its Cover has something for everyone. Each poem in this little book of poems has been sculpted like a piece of art, every word chosen like the ingredient of a recipe. The result is something memorable, useful, thought-provoking and delightful.
Topics range from social media to dating to dieting to stress, with anxiety, mindfulness, friends, flying, kindness and even a china cup thrown in.
So curl up, settle down and soak up this satisfying read of eclectic rhymes which will evoke feelings and memories past and present. You might even find that some of the poems are genuine mood-boosters and help you so much that they become a mantra for your future!

A Book of Birds and Verse for Young and Old

A Book of Birds and Verse is a collection of good-humoured verse fused together with illustrations of some of our best-loved wild birds; birds that we may see every day in our gardens, towns and countryside.

The writer and wildlife artist Joseph Johnson has combined his talents of painting and writing to bring the reader a presentation of a number of Britain’s favourite wild birds, each one introduced through rhyming verse.

Joseph has enjoyed a lifelong love of the natural world and is a keen conservationist. He has written this collection of short illustrated poems with a humour which will introduce, entertain and perhaps educate the young reader as well as the maybe not so young to many of the characteristics of the subjects.

Our fine feathered friends are a blessing to us all and the author hopes that the readers of this book may come to see some of them in a new and fresh light together with a smile.

A Book of Poems and Stories

Young Tree, for that was his name, had everything he could wish for; plenty of love, warmth and food from the forest he lived in with his older brother and parents.

Yet he wanted more than this; he wanted an adventure.

He found it difficult to concentrate on the lessons his mother gave him every day. He dreamt of exotic islands and endless beaches, with coconuts growing everywhere. Monkeys befriended him to keep him company, with flocks of birds to talk to all day.

One fine day he set forth, pulling up his roots. His steps were light and he was full of hope. Leaves crunched beneath his feet.

Even in his determination to face the challenges ahead of him, and which crossed his young mind; the path became more and more difficult.

Have you ever wished for an adventure of your very own, then this is the story for you.

Read on and see what happens to Young Tree…