,Where Has All the Cake Gone,? is an irresistibly tall tale full of warmth, wit, cake and . . . penguins! Parents everywhere will recognise this familiar scenario of a child telling a truly outlandish story to get themselves out of trouble and children alike will love pondering whether Albert’s story could possibly be true.

Andrew Sanders’ fresh voice is full of wit and humour and is perfectly complimented by debut illustrator Aysha Awwad’s bright, bold and energetic artwork.

Read on for a guest post in which author Andrew Sanders talks about the trick to creating a truly funny picturebook, followed by a fact or fib challenge in which we put Andrew’s truth-detection skills to the test…

Guest Post: Creating a Funny Picturebook

by Andrew Sanders, author of Where Has All the Cake Gone?

Since my new picture book, Where Has All the Cake Gone? came out, I’ve gone into a few schools with the book and had some wonderful feedback from kids of all ages. My favourite response was probably “It’s so funny it made milk shoot out of my nose… and I don’t even drink milk.”

You can’t get much higher praise than that.

But, how do you make a funny book?

Well, for one thing, you need to be lucky enough to be paired up with a brilliant illustrator like Aysha Awwad (more on her in a second,) but first and foremost you also just need to write down what actually makes you laugh.

For years, I tried working very carefully and slowly on my books; trimming each line, planning each section, staring into space for hours and wondering if my story would read better by having “could” or “would” in the middle of the tenth page.

Then, one afternoon in a very nice Beverley-based café named Pomas, I sat down and said “stuff it. I’m just going to start typing and see where I end up.” I knew I’d start with a boy, his dad and a missing cake, but aside from that, I wasn’t entirely sure where the story would go.

I’d been listening to a lot of Monty Python sketches around this time, and I remembered loving the way the sketches often started out pretty normal and relatable and then ended up getting progressively sillier and sillier. E.g.

“I’d like to buy a licence for my pet fish, Eric.”

“How did you know my name was Eric?”

“No. My fish’s name is Eric.”

(Reader, from here it goes absolutely crazy.)

I also enjoy a wide variety of comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, Peanuts and TV shows like The Big Bang Theory, Blackadder, Rick and Morty, plus (and I genuinely mean this) Sesame Street. If you’ve not seen “I Dance Myself to Sleep” by Bert & Ernie, then you should. Finish reading this post, and then go check it out. Like Monty Python, it starts off with a simple premise and then just gets sillier and sillier.

After 20 minutes in the café, I had a finished story of around 500 words. This was Where Has All the Cake Gone? and I don’t think I ended up changing any more than about three words before sending it off to my wonderful agent, Hilary.

So, all the funny lines in the book, such as…

“We all went skiing.”

“With kangaroos?”

“No. With Skis. Wait, yes. With kangaroos, too.”

… it’s all influenced by the humour that I’d been absorbing everywhere else.

Of course, writing a book is only half of the book though, and I have to say that Aysha Awwad has done a brilliant job at adding extra humour and jokes throughout the book, for which I would never have even thought there could be a visual gag.

There are certain bits where she has the penguins accidentally taking wrong turns and ending up in New York/Hawaii/Cairo/The Moon – all of which completely work with the humour of the writing, but were totally generated by Aysha. And the tiny details she’s added (like a snowman with a banana for a nose) just make me laugh out loud each time I see them.

So, in short, if you can find what makes you laugh, and channel that sort of humour into your own writing, then you’ve got a pretty good chance it will make other people chuckle, too. I absolutely loved writing Where Has All The Cake Gone? and I hope that everyone who reads it gets the same amount of joy from it, too!

Order Where Has All the Cake Gone? online from Amazon or from Bookshop UK.

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FACT OR FIB CHALLENGE:

As the book features a little boy with a talent for the tallest of tales, we challenged Andrew to guess whether this penguin fact is FACT or FIB.

Fact or fib? Male penguins gift female penguins with pebbles in order to woo them.

Andrew has previously appeared on The Chase and loves trivia! He guessed true and he’s correct. Penguins are considered the most romantic of animals and even create unique songs to serenade mates!

Well done, Andrew! Check out the rest of the blog tour to see the other facts and fibs in the challenge.

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Order Where Has All the Cake Gone? online from Amazon or from Bookshop UK.

Where next?
> Visit our Reading for Pleasure Hub

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> View our printable year group booklists.

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