Paul Jennings' Trickiest Stories

by Paul Jennings

Since Unreal was published in 1985, Paul Jennings has written over 100 stories and sold over eight million copies of his books. To celebrate over twenty years of stories by Paul Jennings, Penguin has put together collections of his work.Hand-picked by Paul, each book contains 20 - 25 stories from the UnCollected series, Tongue-tied and the Super Diaries. Paul Jennings' Funniest Stories, Paul Jennings' Weirdest Stories and Paul Jennings' Spookiest Stories have sold over 110,000 copies combined, and Paul's Trickiest looks set to follow.

Genres: Short Stories, Childrens, Humor

336 pages, Paperback

First published September 29, 2008

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Paul Jennings was born in Heston near London, and at the age of 6 emigrated to Melbourne, Australia on a boat. He was on the boat for 5 weeks with his family. He attended Bentleigh West Primary School and Caulfield Grammar School.

After graduating from school, he went to Frankston Teachers College (now part of Monash University) and became a teacher. He taught students at Frankston State School, Kangaroo Flat State School, the Turana Youth Training Centre, and the Royal Children's Hospital State School in Mount Eliza. He later went on to study at the Lincoln Institute of Health Science (now part of LaTrobe University) and became a speech pathologist, then worked as a Lecturer in Special Education at Burwood State College (now part of Deakin University). In 1979 he became Senior Lecturer in Language and Literature at Warrnambool Institute of Advanced Education (now part of Deakin University).

In 1985, Jennings' first book of short stories, Unreal! was published, during which he worked as a lecturer and wrote part-time; in 1989, he made the decision to devote his full time to writing. Many of his short stories, published between 1985 and 1991, were also adapted into the first and second series of the popular Australian television show Round the Twist.

Winner of the Dromkeen Medal (2000).

Reviews

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

ENGLISH: This collection contains twenty stories, selected from over one hundred stories in Jennings's previous collections. As I had read or reviewed seven of these before, I'll comment here the other thirteen. These are the stories I liked best:

"Just like me," a moving teenager love-story that endures a nine-year separation.

"Ticker," a moving old-people love story that endures after death in the form of an automatic watch, and which moves a young boy to fight and defeat his fears.

All in all, I have read 78 stories of the over one hundred published by Paul Jennings. I don't think I'll get more of them, so this is the end of my reviews of his stories.

ESPAÑOL: Esta colección contiene veinte cuentos, seleccionados entre los más de cien de las colecciones anteriores de Jennings. Como ya había leído o comentado siete de ellos, hablaré aquí sobre los otros trece. Estos son los que más me gustaron:

"Igual que yo", una historia conmovedora de amor adolescente que resiste una separación de nueve años.

"Ticker", una historia conmovedora de amor entre ancianos que perdura más allá de la muerte encarnado en un reloj automático, y que impulsa a un chico a combatir y vencer sus temores.

En total, he leído 78 historias de las más de cien publicadas por Paul Jennings. No creo que consiga más, así que aquí terminan mis reseñas de sus cuentos.

[Ashleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of stories that, surprisingly, I could remember a decent amount of despite having not read it for at least (but probably more than) 10 years.

Some of the stories were better than others, but the majority were good.
Although, a little odd that every single story (all 20 of them) had a male mc. The final story mentions the kids name twice, could have just swapped Nelson for Nellie.

I was surprised by how much the book dealt with death! And how quickly characters can go from fine to dead.

[batima · Rating 5 out of 5]

so this book was great starting from a weird story obout wobby gurgles ending with another hilarious story though it is sad as gavin dies and never gets to shake but byron in the end shakes his hand and honestly that was heartwarming that that happened! anyway awesome book paul jennings is a great author!

[Eileemackinnon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked Paul Jennings "trickiest stories." I initially decided to read it out of boredom but began to enjoy the short stories as it got more in depth. I consider this book a brain teaser as each of the "tricky" tales left you thinking. I especially loved the story "for ever" because it grabbed your attention with the writing techniques and the way Paul Jennings portrayed his ideas. Although iv'e given this book a 4/5 the only criticism i do have is that some of the stories left me confused and unsure of the storyline. Overall I do enjoy reading stories written by Paul Jennings as his books range mostly in child categories and in a sense iv'e grown up reading his work. Trickiest Stories is no exception and makes a great addition to his successful series of books. I would recommend this book to people aged 8-14 as the stories are mostly aimed to a child audience.

[Tara · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is a good short story book. It has so many short story's so very good for our topic in school!!!
The story's are surprisingly scary and a bit weird. They leave the ending so you never know wat happened!!!

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the the millionth time I have read this it is still amazing!

I certainly recommend for all of you to read it!

[Richa · Rating 5 out of 5]

as always funny

[Anija · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book but I prefer his scariest story's better

[Diamondsapples · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE Paul Jennings and I haven't read all of his books....until now, but how do you read it?