Sascha Martin's Super Ball

Kids at Landfill Public School are bouncing off the walls with excitement because it's ... Book Parade! It's also Sascha Martin's News Day. Mr Jack and Mrs Barnum should be terrified. But they're upbeat, they're confident, they're ready to catch anything the day can throw at them. What's going on? Mrs Mayhem is dusting off the First Aid Kit, but Sascha's new invention is perfectly safe, he says ... as long as no one drops it. Why can't they drop it? Sascha won't say, and Mary-Alice Cooper will do anything to find out. Could things get out of hand? They certainly could, and it wouldn't take much to set the ball rolling. One small misstep for Sascha. Check. One giant leap for Mr Jack. Check. One girl who won't take "Just be patient, Mary-Alice," for an answer. Check. From John Arthur Nichol and Manuela Pentangelo, the team who brought you Sascha Martin's Rocket-Ship and Sascha Martin's Time Machine, comes the latest chortle-inducing catastrophe from the chain of disasters that is the Sascha Martin series. Sascha Martin's Super Ball. His worst disaster yet, by leaps and bounds.

John Arthur Nichol hates writing about himself in the third person, so I won't do that.I was born in a hospital named for a king, which now forms part of a hospital named for a prince, and I assume both will be subsumed one day in a hospital named for a robber baron, of whom Sydney's had plenty.67 years later I've worked out what I want to do with my life, and it's something I've been doing all along. I write in verse. I'm not calling it poetry, but I write in verse. I can't help it. Verse happens all day long in my head as my thoughts mould to the flow of half-remembered melodies. English nags me with its rhythms; and if that's not bad enough, I'm compelled to rhyme.So that's who I am and what I do. It's taken a lifetime to recognise it, accept it, and work out what to do about it.I thought for a time that picture books must be the vessel to carry my stories written in verse, so Sascha Martin's Rocket-Ship, Time Machine and Super Ball, respectively, appeared with the beautiful illustrations of Manuela Pentangelo.But the more I wrote ... the more I wrote. The more I wrote, the more I enjoyed it. And the more I understood my needs and my intention.I wasn't writing picture books.I was writing stories that made me smile. I think they make other people smile as well. Not everyone. Just the people who get what I'm doing and who enjoy a smile.They're the ones I'm writing for. And me, of course.So, text is my medium, my stories are in verse that rhymes, my audience is older kids, grown-ups, family, but only the ones who like rhyming smiles. And the format is regular paperback.Just the facts, Ma'am ...1955: Born in Sydney. 65 years of stony sleep ...2020: Retired. New website for my writing. 2022: Epiphany. New website MK II for my writing. Torn between two websites (feeling like a fool). Still writing in verse. Still smiling.