Dim's Write Stuff

Q. What is as big as a mini iPad, more full of ideas than Paul Jennings and doesn't involve looming (of the rubber band type)? A. Awesome Aussie Things to do with Mum . Being a mum pretty much outstrips all other occupations for me. In spite of the startling similarities it shares to being a writer: negligible pay, crippling self-doubt and reoccurring frustration, the ecstasy received from ones own child is unrivalled. I wouldn't swap that feeling for all the stars and moons combined and neither would my Miss 8. Well, maybe she'd short-loan me for a few thousand looms. So in this age of screen-addicted, attention-deficient youngsters, books like these are worth their weight in mini-iPads. Awesome Aussie Things to do with Mum by Ed Allen and Simon Williams, is quietly sensational from this X-generation mum's point of view. Things I like: Nifty, no-nonsense hard-cover, compact size. It's an activities book disguised as favourite fiction. Groovy layout ...

Take one fluffy, scruffy, undersized excuse of a dog, add a love struck teenage boy desperate for a dog to love and bit of female recognition of the human kind, mix it up with a dopey best mate and one granny who’s lost her marbles and the creature you’ll end up with is My Zombie Dog . My Zombie Dog is Queensland author, Charmaine Clancy’s first self-published novel for young readers but not her first encounter with zombie-type dogs like, Fossil, the lead non-living character in this quirky little tale. Zane is the main living character whose one desire for his 14 th Birthday is to receive his very own dog. The kind of dog a boy his age would be proud to run around the block with; a Rotty or even a Border Collie. What he ends up with thanks to his well-meaning but slightly askew mother, is a mutt too large to be a rat, and too small to be a werewolf, but as repulsive as both. And this dog is apparently not well. It promptly drops dead before Zane has a chance to blow out his birthd...