You have been warned

Andy Lee’s bespoke “Do Not Open This Book” was penned for his nephew.

Comedian Andy Lee of Hamish & Andy fame, became a children's book author after publishing 'Do Not Open This Book' as a present for his nephew George's first birthday.

Andy told The Project that originally he "wanted to surprise my sister. I've got a nephew, George, who's about to turn one. I thought writing a book for him as his birthday present would be a nice thing to do."

"I wrote it up, I gave it to my best mate who's a kid's books publisher and I said 'Can you just make one copy for me?'. He rang me back a few weeks later and said 'I asked the other publishers and they'd like to print this'. I said 'Nah mate, give us the one copy'."

But Lee finally gave him the okay, provided that they held back until Andy had surprised Alex and George on his birthday.

"We did manage to surprise my sister. It was little George's birthday and we managed to set up a bookstore with the book in it and as I was taking my sister out to lunch I managed to show her the surprise."

Andy rigged up a bookstore with cameras to capture Alex's heartfelt reaction before Hamish swooped in to interview little George.

Funnily enough, his friends' children have actually been scared by 'Do Not Open This Book'. "Do not buy this book anyone," warned Andy (well you could buy it after you've borrowed it from your library).

"It is about this little character who's trying to convince the reader not to turn the pages. He uses all sorts of tricks, reverse psychology, all these things, but watching a couple of kids read it, I've taken it around to a few of my mates houses, and some of them are too petrified to get to the end."

Adults and parents though love it, a great combination between Andy and illustrator Heath McKenzie - borrow it!.

Don't play with your food

Just came across Carl Warner's work. Artist & photographer Carl began his career as a landscape and still life photographer - and he still is - but he has departed from the norm and struck out into 'foodscapes'. This leaves model-makers for dead!

'Spaghetti Western'

This is one of my favourites, it might be a more obvious choice of construct, but just check out that sky.
Never worry about getting kids to eat their greens if you provide them with a lettuce seascape.

 And when they have devoured their vegies, maybe they'd be allowed this pretty in pink number.

A nod to Australia with Ayers Rock, and to John Steinbeck with this Cereal Dustbowl.

 More at Carl's website

Stilton Cottage

 

Lost for words

Statistics can be boring, but they can also be enlightening.

Take for instance this message from the Geocache people -

We travel from geocache to geocache. We make friends. We are explorers (even if we sometimes get lost). We each have our own story, come in different shapes and sizes, hail from various corners of the planet (though the planet is round), and have our unique missions and goals.
But what brings us all together is this: We love geocaching.
As 2016 has come to a close, we want to say thanks. This game is co-created by people around the world like you: hiding geocaches, hosting events, sending trackables out into the wild, writing logs, and supporting the game.
 

GEOCACHING IN THE STATS 

2,982,645

geocaches were logged. 

526,292  
new geocaches were placed. 

 

So lets get out there and make 2017 a 3 million year of caches found!