Exploding Endings: Painted Dogs & Doom Cakes by Tim Harris

Harbour Publishing, 2015. ISBN 9781922134578
(Age: 8+) Recommended. Tim Harris introduces us into a fun and crazy world in Exploding Endings: Painted Dogs & Doom Cakes, with short stories that showcase his wild sense of humour.
Do you need an excuse for being late to school, then try one of the seventy-nine suggestions? Some excuses are - hitching a ride on a rather large snail, a derailed train, frozen by a X-Men character, stuck in an orbiting rocket or the caterpillar alarm that didn't work! The smiley faces add the commentary, tell jokes and even the pages engage in a duel.
Why does the whole school want to be in detention? There's a rumour Jimmy Webb's found the mysterious Gavin's Gold and it might be hidden in the detention room. Students are outdoing their classmates in an effort to be sent to this classroom. All the Milford Junior School students take over the Art Room painting everything the walls, desks, chairs even the floor. Yes, they are off to detention! Harris of course has an explosive ending to this story - a twist in the tale, one that is hard to predict and of course hilarious.
Boom Powder involves blasting rockets, secret scientific experiments and results in a fuel additive with lemonade powder, that makes Angie and her father wealthy and police vehicles powered with Fizzy Rain. Murphy's Chocolate Cake takes a simple recipe with a five-minute Prep Time and a forty minute bake and turns it into a mega-marathon of improbable situations. Days, weeks and months of crazy, comical antics occur in preparing the cake, until Mum is forced to sell the house and they move to the beach. Beware of this explosive ending!
Painted Dogs & Doom Cakes is a fabulous class read-aloud and a comical stimulus for creative writing. Where will Tim Harris take us in the second Exploding Endings novel?
Rhyllis Bignell