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QUESTIONS LETTER QUIZ EXAMPLES |
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QUESTIONS LETTER QUIZ EXAMPLES |
The Life of Andy Griffiths
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Andy Griffiths is the author of the popular Just! series of short stories (illustrated by Terry Denton). Andy is also well known to teachers and students in Australia as the author of Swinging on the Clothesline and Rubbish Bins in Space. These collections of story fragments and writing exercises are used widely in schools, and teachers have found Andy's ideas a great help for all levels of students. Andy has also written four scratch and smell picture books (illustrated by Jeff Raglus): Banana Boy, Hamburger Man, Jelly Bean Girl and Rose Petal Fairy. Andy believes that ordinary life provides a wealth of material for story-writing, and his entertaining talks and inspiring workshops ensure that he is in constant demand in schools, with many repeat engagements. His experience as a teacher, his approachable manner and his sense of humour all combine to make him popular with students of all ages. |
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FIRST TYPEWRITER Andy's first typewriter was a 1920's Underwood. He paid twenty cents for it at a white elephant stall at his school fete when he was ten years old. Andy taught himself to type, and wrote all his early stories on this typewriter. FIRST MAGAZINE In year seven Andy used his typewriter to start a magazine called Popcorn, which featured jokes, riddles, puzzles, cartoon strips and fake news articles. Andy wrote, typed and fordiographed the magazine and sold it to other year seven students for three cents a copy. |
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In year eight, Andy had a story published in Pursuit magazine. The story, called Lost in Time, was about a boy who is transported many thousands of years into the future while buying two packets of chips and a can of coke at the footy.
When Andy was thirteen he heard the music of Alice Cooper and was inspired to begin writing his own songs. He also formed his own imaginary band called Silver Cylinder. Throughout Andy's secondary school years, Silver Cylinder's stage performances, sets, equipment lists, albums and world tours were mapped out in great detail by Andy and other 'band members' during pottery classes. This culminated in a performance by the band on the final day of year twelve, with Andy as lead singer. The concert was a huge success and led to the formation of an experimental band called Gothic Farmyard, which over the next few years played many gigs in Melbourne's alternative venues.
Read about a few of Andy's favourite things:
1 Putting my hand underneath a steamroller
2 Pigging out on souvlakis until I explode
3 Finding a funnel-web spider in the bed with me
4 Getting fishbones stuck in my throat
5 Tripe
6 Having an arrow fired into my eye
7 Stepping out in front of fast-moving cars
8 Sticking bananas up my nose
9 Scraping my fingernails down the blackboard
10 Razzing up dogs until they bite me
11 Pumping up the weasel until it goes pop
12 Going swimming less than half an hour after a big lunch and being swept away in heavy surf
13 Forgetting to jump at the top of an escalator and having my toes shredded into pet mince
14 Pretending I'm a nail and hammering myself into a wall
15 Licking a red-hot iron
16 Cauliflower
17 Supergluing my eyelids shut
18 Bungee jumping without a bungee
19 Coating my body with honey and lying on top of an ants' nest
20 Beating myself senseless
21 Cod liver oil
22 Being consumed by wolves
23 Being consumed by crocodiles
24 Diving into a vat of boiling vinegar
25 Finding a toothbrush with black bristles in the gutter and taking it home
26 Cleaning my teeth with it
27 Skinny dipping in a room completely filled with whipped cream and strawberries
28 The parson's nose
29 Being buried alive
30 Stuffing burning toilet paper into public mail boxes
31 The sound of breaking glass
32 Bank robbing
33 Travelling back in my mind to the complete and utter beginning of time
34 Having chairs broken over my head in old western movie style bar brawls
35 Revenge
36 Lying belly down on a conveyer belt in a timber mill and being cut in half by a rotating blade
37 Watching a piece of white sandwich bread become toast
38 Watching the toast become smoke
39 Being sucked down the plughole
40 Olives and anchovies
41 Twistie sandwiches
42 Going on dates with beautiful shop dummies
43 Having my teeth extracted one at a time by the crazy dentist in 'Bloodsucking Freaks'
44 Having the same dentist drill a hole in the top of my skull, insert a glass tube and suck my brains out
45 The smell of newborn puppies
46 Sunrise
47 Riding my bike without holding onto the handlebars
48 Mud wrestling
49 Mud neuro-surgery
50 Spray-painting myself pink and running up and down my street squealing like a pig
51 Playing ragtime blues on the piano without touching the black keys, the white keys, the pedals, the stool or the floor
52 Being smothered by a ton of feathers
53 Being crushed by a ton of bricks
54 Having both of my thumbs snip-snapped off by the scissors of the great, long, red-legged scissor-man because I can't stop sucking them
55 Watching my thumbs grow back again
56 Kidneys
57 Maggots
58 Rainbows
59 Running along deserted beaches with my eyes shut tight
60 Running across busy roads with my eyes shut tight
61 Lying around in hospital beds
62 Photographing all the different types of flush buttons on toilets
63 Showing off for the benefit of the documentary-makers who are secretly filming every moment of my life for a full-length feature film to be released on the first anniversary of my death. (I haven't actually seen any of the documentary makers, but that's because they don't want me to get self-conscious and ruin the film. Suckers!)
64 The taste of the gum on the back of stamps
65 My collection of Arrowmint chewing gum wrappers
66 My collection of burnt rusty nails
67 My collection of blackbird foetuses retrieved from the ground underneath their nests during the great storm of '84
68 Merry-go-rounds
69 Washing machines with glass portholes
70 St Kilda pier
71 Finding two dollar coins on the footpath
72 Freezing my leg, tapping it with a hammer and watching it shatter
73 Growing a new leg
74 Shedding a skin
