Crash! Bang! Wallop!

by Allan Ahlberg, Colin McNaughton (Illustrator)

"Wonderful...It is hard to imagine better first reading books." The Times Educational Supplement.

Genres: Childrens, Picture Books

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Allan Ahlberg was one of the UK's most acclaimed and successful authors of children's books - including the best-selling Jolly Postman series. Born in Croydon in 1938, he was educated at Sunderland Technical College. Although he dreamed of becoming a writer since the age of twelve, his route to that goal was somewhat circuitous. Other jobs along the way included postman (not an especially jolly one, he recalls), gravedigger, plumber, and teacher.

Ahlberg wrote his first book when he was thirty-seven, after a decade of teaching - a profession that he maintains is "much harder" than being a writer. He says that if he hadn't become a writer, he would have loved to be a soccer player. He was married for many years to fellow children's author Janet Ahlberg, with whom he often worked. Their daughter, Jessica Ahlberg, is also a children's author.

Reviews

[SBC · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know if there is a special name for this type of story, when one thing happens and causes another thing to happen and so on (i.e. there is a series of events in which each event was caused by the previous one). It reminded me of a favourite story from my childhood - Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo by Rosetta Stone (aka Dr Seuss).

In this story the instigating incident is a little bee that went buzz, that frightened a frog who went croak, and so on. It was also circular, ending with another bee going buzz. The end of the book has a cute 'Picture Dictionary' with 7 pictures of characters from the story.