Cirrus

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BiographyHistory

Paul Jennings was born in England in 1943 and came to Australia at the age of six. He grew up in Melbourne and was educated and trained as a teacher there. He later studied speech therapy and for six years worked with disabled and socially deprived children. He has been a lecturer in special education and then a senior lecturer in language and literature at Warrnambool Institute of Education in country Victoria while writing part-time.

Jennings wrote his first book Unreal, which was published in 1985, partly in response to his son's boredom with the book he was reading. He returned to Melbourne in 1989 with his family to become a full-time writer because of his involvement with the TV series 'Round the Twist' produced by the Australian Television Foundation for which he wrote all thirteen scripts. It became a top rating children's program shown in over forty countries around the world.

Paul Jennings is one of Australia's best loved children's writers, and has been the recipient of numerous literary awards. His many novels and collections for children of all ages are entertaining, quirky and sometimes spooky. In Singenpoo Strikes Again (1998) Jennings uses the cat Singenpoo to explore the experiences of young children learning to read. Jennings demonstrates that the uneven process can ultimately lead to mastering reading and a love of books.

Jennings's books include the collections Unbelievable (1986), Quirky Tails (1988) and Uncanny (1988), and the novels The Cabbage Patch Fib (1989), The Paw Thing (1989) and Undone: More Mad Endings (1995). In 2000 he published a six volume series of adventure stories. His novel Tongue-Tied! was published in 2002. His books have been translated into many languages.