1. Alliteration
2. Animals
3. Anthropomorphism
4. Book design
5. Creativity
6. Humour
7. Imagination
8. Literary techniques
9. Newspapers
10. Visual literacy
11. Zoos

‘The Shaggy Gully Times’ is the perfect combination of writer and illustrator who are in tune with each other’s sense of verbal and visual humour. Jackie French confesses she is a big fan of country newspapers, her inspiration for ‘The Shaggy Gully Times’. Bruce Whatley is similarly inspired.

The Shaggy Gully community features in the book design’s newspaper layout. What’s news? ‘Police Reports’ with Rooster serving three months for using ‘fowl’ language. For food lovers, there are recipes including Shaggy Gully Pizza with stomach-turning ingredients—the ‘Frog and Feathers’ pizza includes flies, gnats, mosquitoes, tomato and melted cheese. There is the usual TV Guide, Personal Column (‘Lonely Lion Longs for Love’), ‘For Sale’, ‘To Let’, ‘Positions Vacant’, ‘Horror Scope’ and more, each littered with clever puns and jokes. News from the Library promotes new titles including, ‘Nose picking can be fun’ by O. Yuk and ‘Eaten Alive’ by Amos Quito. Multiple interactive pages include crossword puzzles and join the dots, all cleverly riddled with humour.

Also featured are multiple puns, misspellings and a rambling (but entertaining) commentary from Mothball Wombat, the newspaper’s editor. He clearly feels ‘hard done by’ and continuously complains and corrects the authors and contents of each article. The humour sneaks up on the reader. Not only are French’s words inventive and oh so silly, but the newspaper parodies itself. Also watch for the story parodies of familiar folk tales exemplified by the ‘Blond Intruder and the Three Bears’.

Mothball Wombat is an irritated (and irritating) editor, forever interrupting his own thoughts, reversing his words and correcting countless typos with his red pen while commenting on the mayhem, but this is part of the fun. There are multiple references, both in words and images, to Jackie’s and Bruce’s work together in other picture books offering a self-referential celebration of two creators with their finely tuned sense of humour. Bruce Whatley’s artwork adds immensely to each and every joke and silly story. ‘The Shaggy Gully Times’ offers the perfect creative pair to champion ‘THE FPUNNIEST NEWSPAPER YOU’LL EVER READ’. ‘The Shaggy Gully Times’ is an ideal sharing experience with each page crammed with visual and verbal jokes.

1. Scholastic Scool Teaching Notes by Chris Sarandis for ‘The Shaggy Gully Times’ plus author and illustrator profiles http://www.scool.scholastic.com.au/schoolzone/toolkit/assets/pdfs/Shaggy_Gully_Times-Lucky.pdf
2. HarperCollins Publisher Activity Kit features activities for young people based on ‘The Shaggy Gully Times’ http://4edd9444c072ad07aff7-11d966b2703d5a5467932b6516b2610f.r67.cf2.rackcdn.com/teaching-guides/TG-9780732284114.pdf
3. Jackie French’s website explores the inspiration for ‘The Shaggy Gully Times’ https://www.jackiefrench.com/the-shaggy-gully-times
4. Kids’ Book Review 17 May 2012 review by Lachlan, age 8 in ‘Year 4 Literacy Class Review: The Shaggy Gully Times’ http://www.kids-bookreview.com/2012/05/year-4-literacy-class-review-shaggy.html
5. Teaching Expertise 11 Jan 2022 by Kay Bancroft offers ‘17 Useful Article Sites for Students’ with wide-ranging resources https://www.teachingexpertise.com/classroom-ideas/article-sites-for-students/
6. Busy Teacher Susan Verner ‘Extra! Extra! Putting together a class newspaper is easy, no extra work required!’ https://busyteacher.org/6941-how-to-put-together-a-class-newspaper.html