I Don’t Believe It, Archie!

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                                              http://ow.ly/8USRa

STARRED review from John Peters of the American Library Association.

“Superb comic timing… readers will be vastly entertained by Archie’s misadventures”

I Don’t Believe It, Archie! by Andrew Norriss

Odd things happen to Archie every day. Some very odd things.
Click here to see inside.

While I ate lunch today, I read I Don’t Believe It, Archie! by Andrew Norriss.  Not a good idea. This book is so funny, you will be laughing out loud with your mouth full!

“A whole load of unbelievable and outrageously funny things happen to Archie in the course of a week in this entertaining book for independent early readers. “
Philippa Logan – Oxford Times

Book 2 in the Archie! series: Archie’s Unbelievably Freaky Week   Aug 2nd 2012

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I Don’t Believe It, Archie!  is the perfect book for Primary Schools:

‘Read it to Yr 2/3,  Yr 3/4/5  can read it alone, and it’ll be great to encourage struggling yr 5/6′   B.R.  Hants SLS

‘Unbelievably‘  good cross curricular teaching resources on the Teaching Library here

Click here to see some of Hannah Shaw’s brilliant illustrations…

Click here to download a Word Search for ‘I Don’t Believe It, Archie!’ (nice and easy!)

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FIRST starred review in the March 1, 2012 issue of Booklist (circ: 20,000):

“Superb comic timing….readers will be vastly entertained by Archie’s misadventures”

Clearly destined to become the Most Interesting Man in the World when he grows up, young Archie is an ordinary lad to whom extraordinary things happen—every day. On Monday he is the only witness as a rolling car with a child and a would-be rescuer inside gets buried beneath a load of gravel. On Tuesday he is blamed for killing a dog that he is actually rescuing

. On Wednesday he discovers the hard way that the handles on both doors of his local library have been coated with superglue. With superb comic timing, Norriss casts his level-headed but inarticulate chappie into one escalating predicament after another—each exacerbated by adults who arrive on the scene a little late and won’t listen to his stammered explanations. Fortunately, Archie makes a new friend, Cyd, who has a knack for always being ready with a cogent video, a handy cell phone, or just the right words to untangle each mare’s nest. Like Cyd, readers will be

vastly entertained by Archie’s misadventures (all of which interrupt quick errands for his mother that, to her continuing exasperation, somehow never get done) and delighted by the uncommonly clever way that the author caps off the eventful week by weaving all of its brangles into an almost magical resolution to Sunday’s crisis. Shaw’s cartoon sketches reflect the tongue-in-cheek tone of each hilarious episode.

— John Peters

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~Susanne Miller, Youth Services Librarian, South Hill Library

While I ate lunch today, I read I Don’t Believe It, Archie! by Andrew Norriss.  Not a good idea. This book is so funny, you will be laughing out loud with your mouth full! Archie is a kid who lives in England, so to get the most out of this book, you will need to know or be able to figure out what a lorry, trainers or a swimming costume are. The thing about Archie is that weird things happen to him. On Monday on his way to mail a letter, Archie sees a piano rolling down the street.  The piano stops next to a car, trapping a girl named Cyd inside. Archie goes to get help, only to see an elderly man pushing the car enough for Cyd to get a door open.  But then the car starts rolling down the street toward a dump truck. The man is able to run along side, open the door and get in the car and pull the emergency brake just in time to avoid crashing into the dump truck.  Then the truck raises its bed and buries the car, with Cyd and the old man inside, in a huge pile of rubble. Soon you will be saying, along with Archie’s mother, “I just don’t believe it!” Get ready for a whole week of laughs with Archie and his new best friend Cyd.  I recommend this book for readers in grades four to six.  P.S. trainers are tennis shoes, a lorry is a truck, and a swimming costume is a swimsuit.

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More Reviews. Read them all in full here

Gill Robins of The English Association: ‘To borrow the parlance of the texting generation, this is an lol book – every page will make you laugh out loud.  It recounts just one eventful week in the life of Archie, a week in which he leaves home to run simple errands and finds himself embroiled in one adventure after another.’  more

John Dougherty of The Scattered Authors: ‘… Archie himself is an endearing hero, resilient yet resigned – to the facts both that all these strange things keep happening to him, and that the grown-ups he meets just won’t believe his account of things. In fact, it’s easy to see Archie’s adventures as a metaphor for childhood – a time of life when much of what happens is unexpected, and when the grown-ups around you insist on imposing their own interpretations on events. Fortunately, in the first chapter he meets Cyd  more.

Kirkus Review ‘Some are born to mayhem (Ivy + Bean come to mind), some achieve mayhem (Dav Pilkey’s George and Harold)—and then there’s Archie…‘ Read the review from March 1st.
School Librarian; December 22, 2011; Lepper, Angela:   ‘A huge success with my 7-year-old tester…’
Published by David Fickling Books.  Hardback  2011,  Paperback 2012

Short link:  http://ow.ly/72wuH

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