Sarah Brennan Funny & Fabulous Blog

Congratulations Harry!

You’ll all know Harry Harrison’s amazing children’s illustrations from our Chinese Calendar Tales, not to mention those Dirty Stories – but did you know that Harry’s also an award-winning cartoonist? Here are the awards he’s won so far this year:

• Award for Excellence in Editorial Cartooning at this years SOPA 2012 Awards:  http://www.sopasia.com/awards/2012-awards/
• ISES Esprit Award for Best Event Film-Making (artwork): http://networkedblogs.com/Dmkqn
• 16th Human Rights Press Award for the FCC Hong Kong – for the fourth year in a row! http://fcchk.org/article/16th-human-rights-press-awards-winners-list

Congratulations Harry – and thanks for being my Funny and Fabulous Illustrator!

Tick tock, tick tock – just four days left to enter my Autumn Haiku competition!

The deadline for my Autumn Haiku competition is this Friday, 26th October! So if you haven’t sent in your entry yet, you’d better sharpen your pencil and get writing! See my Clever Competitions page above for all the details!

It’s time to climb a mountain!

Happy Chung Yeung Holiday to you all! Legend has it that on this day, a boy named Heng Jing saved his village by the Ruhe River by climbing a mountain and offering the plague devil some wine made from Chrysanthemum flowers. The wine killed the devil and the village was saved! Ever since, it has been auspicious to climb a mountain on Chung Yeung Holiday.  So which mountain did you climb today? Was it Hong Kong’s famous Lion Rock (pictured above) or the Dragon’s Back, or maybe just Victoria Peak! Or maybe you climbed a mountain in a different country altogether! Wherever you went, I hope the view was wonderful!

Viva Las Vegas and Henderson and the school librarians of Clark County!

A big HELLO to all the fabulous school librarians of Clark County, Nevada! It was wonderful to meet you all today by Skype at your weekly conference! I hope you all enjoy reading my Chinese Calendar Tales, not to mention those Dirty Stories! I look forward to meeting you all again soon. Many thanks to Juli Clark of CCLSA and Jennifer Nelson of Eliassen Creative LLC for setting it all up.

Just 11 more days to enter my Autumn Haiku Competition!

If you haven’t yet written your Autumn Haiku for my Clever Competition, you’d better get your skates on! There are just 11 days to go to get your entry in! See my Clever Competitions page above for all the details about how to enter!

Sssss…sss…sss…sss

Here’s a tantalising snippet from Harry Harrison’s amazing illustrations for our Chinese Calendar Tale for next year which is going off to the printers VERY soon! No prizes for guessing what Chinese Zodiac beastie  it’s all about! And if you don’t know what that word “tantalising” means you need to go to my Wicked Word page (above) right away! Try it out on your Mum and Dad tonight!

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival…there’s a feast waiting for you!

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to all you kids in Hong Kong and China out there! And a very happy weekend to everyone else! I’ve got a real feast waiting for you all here on my blog!

Now here’s a likely lot of monsters…Yes, they’re the Wild Things from Where the Wild Things Are, featured on my latest posting on my Brilliant Books page above! Did you know that the Wild Things were originally meant to be wild horses? And did you know that their extraordinary creator Maurice Sendak, who died in May this year, thought that most children were far superior to adults?! Read all about this unique book and its truly remarkable author illustrator by clicking the Amazing Authors and Brilliant Books tabs at the top of this page!

Now I can promise you that Maurice Sendak never played a computer game in his life! Nor watched much TV. Nor texted his friends all day on his mobile phone. That’s how he came to have such an amazing imagination! So if you want to be a world famous author, take heed of my new Top Writing Tip for Kids by clicking the button above! The overuse of technology is firmly in the frame as a deadly imagination-blocker…so when you’ve read my post, why don’t you do something really radical and switch off all those computers, TVs, X-boxes and mobile phones you’ve got on today and experience some real life! It will make you a better writer, I promise!

Hello Grade 3 Kingston International School!

Hello to all the fabulous Grade 3 kids at Kingston International School! It was such fun seeing you all again today and introducing you to my naughty, very vain Pin Yin Panda! Not to mention our great workshop session on Writing a Riveting Story! I look forward to seeing lots of entries from you all in my next story competition!

My brand new Clever Competition for Autumn starts TODAY!

It’s the end of summer…the days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer, and even though we’re all still wearing T-shirts and shorts, those chilly Autumn days are just around the corner! So it’s high time for another Clever Competition to warm up our brain cells and exercise our imaginations! This time it’s a very special Autumn Haiku Competition! Go to my Clever Competitions page above right away for all the details! The deadline is Friday October 26th, so you’d better get writing! Ready, steady, GO!

Did your dog eat your homework last night?

If your dog REALLY ate your homework last night, then what do you need when your teacher gives you a detention today? You need my new Wicked Word, that’s what! Go to the Wicked Words tab above right away to find out what that word is! You can even use it on your teacher!