Cirrus@Austlit

'All 12-year-old Charlie Duncan wanted was a simple paper round. What he uncovers is a league of evil grannies plotting to set up a ‘Granny State’, where everyone will be forced to wear brown cardigans, go to bed early and there will be NO CHILDREN! The stakes are high and it’s up to Charlie and his best friend Hils to go to war with the fiendish grannies and stop them taking over the world.'

Source: Sydney Opera House.

'I didn't want Mrs Cyclopolos to explode. I just wanted a paper round.

'My name is Charlie Ian Duncan. I will be 12 on 2 February. I have written this history of my war with the grannies because I need everyone to know that I didn't mean for Mrs Cyclopolos to blow up. I just wanted a paper round.

'When I say 'my war with the grannies', I really mean the war I waged alongside my best friend Hils, my second-best-friend Rashid, Peter the Iraqi who isn't afraid of anything (well apart from one thing), Warren and his magical bike TwelveSpeed and those crazy people we met underground.

'The grannies started it when I asked them about a paper round and they sprayed me in the face with rooster brand chilli sauce and made me think that I was dead. Hils and I decided to go to war with them but then I discovered one of the grannies had a glass eye and I wasn't sure if it was okay to go to war against someone with a glass eye but then I discovered that the granny with the glass eye could pinch bricks in half, turn her snot-covered hankies into deadly throwing weapons and possessed a truly terrible device called the Gnashing Gnet.

'It's all true.

'Especially the bit about me not wanting anyone to blow up. ' (Publication summary)