Humour is quite often the ‘hook’ that can draw children into reading. Equally many children are overwhelmed by the length of some novels and find collections of short stories or novellas more appealing. Former teacher Rob Walton has created something quite original in this book that breaks all the conventional rules and Please Don’t Read the Footnotes Please is quirky, amusing and inventive and could also be a prompt to encourage children to think about writing styles and formats.

Please Don’t Read the Footnotes Please is a humorous collection of 30 short stories by writer, performer and former teacher Rob Walton. The author breaks all the rules in this short and accessible book, popping up throughout with his thoughts, facts and mischievous asides. Despite the warning contained in the title it will be a resolute reader who is not tempted to move around the page reading the interruptions alongside the stories. This makes for a somewhat haphazard reading experience but a rewarding one nonetheless.

Some of the stories are less than one whole page, others run to a few pages but all are whimsical in nature and contain the author’s rather irreverent view of life. Most are set in schools giving this a relatable quality for the book’s readers. I developed a soft spot for supply teacher Ms Tsang who rises above the mayhem with aplomb. There is a rather different sort of Goldilocks tale, a couple featuring a horse named Jeremy, a continuing saga featuring The Knights of the Butterwicks and a more thoughtful story of a little girl known as Penny Chocolate.

With considerable appeal for readers who enjoy The Wimpy Kid or Horrible Histories style of book Please Don’t Read the Footnotes Please also contains illustrations, highlighting the humour, by Reena Makwana, who has illustrated other titles published by The Emma Press such The Untameables. Both the illustrations and the presentation encourage readers who like to dip in to a book and may be described as ‘reluctant’. However this would also work well in the classroom with the teacher reading it aloud and discussing the format, the role of the author and the use of language.

This is a very different sort of book that rather defies pigeonholing into a specific genre but its quirky appeal will most definitely get children talking and encourage them to think about stories and language in a way they may not have considered before. Please Don’t Read the Footnotes Please is published by The Emma Press on 20th March and I should like to thank the publishers and Catherine Ward for providing my review copy and for inviting me to participate in this blog tour. You may like to follow the rest of the tour to find out more about both the book and its author.