2. Aug, 2015

Ever wondered what kind of person makes money from innocent homeless children? Matron Pluckrose from Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children by Jen Storer is the exact opposite of what you would expect from someone who works in childcare.

This Matron is a woman who is obsessed with money. She is “like a bloodhound” when it comes to getting her hands on riches. She forces children to work for her, but they are not nice jobs and they do not get paid. The poor kids have to scrub floors, remove guts out of fish and perform other gross chores.

Matron Pluckrose is bald so she wears a blonde wig to conceal her true appearance. She wears very vibrant lipstick, her favourite being “Red Alert”. This villain is a chain-smoker and blows cigarettes in the children’s faces. How rude!

A nasty piece of work, Matron Pluckrose doesn’t refer to children as girls and boys, but as “Dribblers”, “Twerps”, “Fribbles”, “Misfits” and “Vagrants”. She obviously hates children because she calls them rude names!

This walking evil doesn’t care about the children she looks after. She offers the lives of children in exchange for the secret of how to stop being bald.

You may recognise this picture from my home page. It is not Matron Pluckrose, but is Tensy Farlow. And yes, this is one of my favourite books!

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YAY! The 2015 MS Readathon has started. You can check out my blog, reading list, or sponsor me HERE.

The Ultimate Story competition is now open. Each week, a chapter will be revealed, and it will be your job to write the fourth. Chapter two was written by ME! To enter, you need to be registered to and have raised at least $20 in this year's MS Readathon. CLICK HERE for more information.

Image: from www.penguin.com.au and illustrated by Sonia Kretschmar

27. Jul, 2015

“Off with her head!”

There’s no guessing who said this – The Queen of Hearts, of course! Certainly one truly horrible being. And yes, she does threaten to take away the lives of folks she doesn’t like.

Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts is WAY more terrible than the Disney version of her. When Alice, the main character, falls down a rabbit hole, she is doomed to meet this shameful tyrant. When she hears of her, she is horrified at the rumours of her taking of heads.

All of the royal family in Wonderland are a deck of cards. Literally. That is why the Queen is named, ‘The Queen of Hearts’, because she is a playing card. The same goes with the rest of the royalty, including her own ten children. Things are very weird in Wonderland, don’t you think so?

The Queen of Hearts acts terribly to everyone she meets. Within a minute of greeting Alice, the Queen is screaming to take off her head. She is very hot-headed and short-tempered.

This hard-hearted ruler acts first and thinks later. In a trial, she says, “No, no – sentence first, verdict afterwards.” She uses live flamingos and hedgehogs as croquet gear and changes the rules in order to win. The Queen of Hearts is certainly a cruel, unthoughtful woman!

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I would like to thank Figtree Heights Public School for being such a great audience for my presentation this week. I really enjoyed talking about both the MS Readathon and my website. There is still time to sign up for the 2015 MS Readathon. Please join me at www.msreadathon.org.au for a whole heap of fun for a good cause.

Next week: Who takes an only possession off a child with fiery red hair and owns a “Home for Mislaid Children”? Find out in my next blog.

(Image: by John Tenniel from fineartamerica.com)

19. Jul, 2015

Jackpot! This week I am blogging about a handful of villains from one of my favourite book series about Skulduggery Pleasant. Each of the baddies are strange and funny, so they are all very unique.

First up, Dreylan Scarab. Scarab goes to jail for almost 200 years and, in the fourth book, comes out an old man. When he is released, he meets up with many other villains and forms a group which they call The Revengers Club. They master an evil plan to steal the Desolation Engine from the Sanctuary, where sorcerers and Grand Mages live. The Desolation Engine is a bomb that makes everything in the same room as it disintegrate. They all agree on stealing it, and that’s where Scarab and his friends turn into real villains.

Billy-Ray Sanguine is Scarab’s son and also a member of The Revengers Club. One of the scary things about him is that he has no eyes. Freaky! When Fletcher Renn meets him in the third book, he just doesn’t know who to trust, a man with no eyes or Skulduggery Pleasant - a skeleton detective. Luckily, Fletcher chooses Skulduggery. Billy-Ray always has a straight razor with him and when it is taken off him he is terribly angry. He wears sunglasses and talks with an amusing accent. Billy-Ray has awesome powers: he can make the ground erupt from underneath him and make secret passages underground!

Next, the hilarious Vaurien Scapegrace. He first appears in Book Two as a sorcerer who wears a tattered coat and he complains a lot. Scapegrace wants to slay everyone in the world, but does not manage to take the life of anyone in his whole woeful lifetime. In the fourth book Scapegrace perishes and becomes a zombie. Yes, a zombie! He cannot use magic like he once could because that is what holds him together. Scapegrace has rotting skin and annoys everyone.

Doctor Nye is a monster. Literally. Not a he or a she, so Doctor Nye is an it. As a doctor, he deals with wounds that need magic to fix them. He steals hearts and in some operations he uses a hedge trimmer.

Darquesse. That name really sounds evil, doesn’t it? Well, in the fourth book, Skulduggery and his gang visit a lady named Cassandra, who takes them to The Steam Chamber. There, she shows them a vision which includes a female Necromancer, Darquesse. They see that Darquesse will destroy the world, and they see themselves, too. She wears black and is like a shadow. She is a state of mind. There is more, but I won’t reveal it or it would ruin the story for you. All of the Remnants love Darquesse. Remnants are ghost-like creatures who crawl inside mouths and take over one’s whole being. When inside, they have the person’s memories, but Remnants are not nice.

Dusk is a bloodthirsty vampire. He is pale and strangely beautiful, and calm. Dusk is bad at night and at day, unlike some of the other vampires. The transformation of him becoming a vampire is horrific. He rips his skin off, but not all of it wants to come off so that he ends up with a dreadful appearance. Dusk has a massive scar across his face from Billy-Ray’s razor. Since he is a vampire, he holds massive grudges and he never gives up until he spills blood.

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There is still time to sign up for the 2015 MS Readathon. Register now at www.msreadathon.org.au and join me for a whole heap of fun for a good cause.

(Image: Illustrated by Tom Percival from www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk)