September 15

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Hey, Educators! Josh Funk Wants to Embarrass You! (Book Trailer Premiere for IT’S NOT JACK AND THE BEANSTALK)

Posted by on September 15, 2017 in Author Posts | 8 Comments

Educators are the best! I’ve written before about how #TeachersAreRockStars and how incredible it is that you work 100+ hour weeks basically year round, etc, etc. I love you all. And hopefully you look good in front of your students when you read my and other authors’ books.

 

However, with my newest book, I thought I’d try something different. Rather than make you look good … I’m gonna try to embarrass you.

 

See, I’ve done some school visits in the past year, mostly while traveling around to share LADY PANCAKE & SIR FRENCH TOAST and its sequel THE CASE OF THE STINKY STENCH.

 

    

 

If you’ve ever seen me on a school visit, I like to involve the audience – I say audience, not students, because we play an interactive ‘game’ where we make up characters. I get two student volunteers, and then everyone else gets to help pick a food and a job for them to act out. Some of my favorites were Professor Pizza, Officer Taco, and Geneticist Macaroni. We even had a President Fruitcake (not to be confused with any other Presidents you may have heard of – President Fruitcake is purely fiction).

 

Unfortunately, our two volunteer characters are always good friends – and we can’t have much of a story with just two friends having a happy time. To make it more interesting, we need a little conflict. Something bad has to happen. What we really need is … a villain.

 

Which is why I involve a third volunteer, this one being an educator (preferably the principal). And transforming the principal or librarian or teacher into a villain gets the biggest laughs of the day.

 

And that’s when I realized that I wanted to write a book that made adults look silly – not adult characters IN the book – but the adult readers of the book. I wanted to write a book where the reader/storyteller/narrator gets so frustrated, annoyed, and even angry with the book that the children listening would laugh at YOU.

 

So I give you IT’S NOT JACK AND THE BEANSTALK, illustrated by the magnificent Edwardian Taylor (definitely worth a follow on Instagram).

 

And to demonstrate its ability to frustrate adult readers, here is the official debut of the IT’S NOT JACK AND THE BEANSTALK book trailer, featuring fellow Nerdy Book Club members Niki Barnes, Kathy Burnette, Carrie Davies, Chad Everett, Scott Fillner, Julie Kirchner, Sara Ralph, Pernille Ripp, and Kurt Stroh (they’re all worth a follow on Twitter), and filmed entirely on location at nErDcampMI this past July.

 

 

I apologize in advance for making you look silly. But really, I’m not sorry.

 

Enjoy IT’S NOT JACK AND THE BEANSTALK – available next Tuesday – 9/19/17

 

Photo Credit: Carter Hasegawa

Josh Funk writes silly stories and somehow tricks people into publishing them as books – such as the Nerdy Book Club Award-winning DEAR DRAGON and LADY PANCAKE & SIR FRENCH TOAST along with IT’S NOT JACK AND THE BEANSTALK, and the upcoming ALBIE NEWTON, HOW TO CODE A SANDCASTLE (in partnership with Girls Who Code), and more.

Josh is a board member of The Writers’ Loft in Sherborn, MA. was the co-coordinator of the 2016 and 2017 New England Regional SCBWI Conferences, and has written a free 12-Step Guide to Writing Picture Books. Josh grew up in New England and studied Computer Science in school. Today, he still lives in New England and when not writing Java code or Python scripts, he drinks Java coffee and writes manuscripts.

Find out more about Josh at www.joshfunkbooks.com and on Twitter @joshfunkbooks.