Author Paul Jennings was initially upset when he saw the cover of his hit book Unreal!

Not only were Jennings’ stories delightfully wacky, but they were easy to read, meaning you could finish one after school and still have time to catch an episode of A*Mazing on TV at 4pm.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of his first book, Unreal!, which has sold more than 600,000 copies and has been translated into more than 10 different languages.

The author, now 72, was kind enough to open up to news.com.au about the inspiration behind some of his Unreal! stories, and why he was less than pleased when he saw the book’s cover for the first time.

“When I started writing I made a vow that I was never going to use an exclamation mark,” said Jennings.

“I believed that they were a bit lazy so I set myself the task of never using one and then when the book came out they put one on the cover. I was really quite upset about that, well, not upset because I was just pleased to get the book published, but I found that rather ironic.”

Now let’s get to some of the stories …

Pete (Sam Vandenberg) and Linda (Tamsin West) in Round the Twist.Source:Herald Sun

Without a shirt:

“It’s a story about a boy who lives in the middle of a cemetery and the boy has a compulsive problem of saying, ‘Without a shirt’ at the end of every sentence,” said Jennings.

So where did the idea come from?

“When I was a boy I had a friend whose father, when I would go with them in their car, the dad used to like to sing and at the end of every song he used to add, ‘Without a shirt.’

“It didn’t have any rhyme or reason but it was a bit of a family joke.”

This story was one of many that was adapted for an episode of that classic ABC TV show, Round The Twist, although for the TV version Jennings changed the speech impediment to “Without my pants” to make it a little funnier.

“A funny thing that happened with that story was when my editor rang up and said, ‘There’s a mistake in the book Paul.’ This was after it had been printed.

“Basically, the boy in the story had a dog called Shovel and he lived in the middle of the cemetery where the dog used to dig holes which is not a good place to have a dog. The dog only had one eye and there was a line that said, ‘I looked into his deep brown eyes,’ and anyway my editor pointed out that the dog only had one eye. I said, ‘let’s just take the S off the end,’ and it was reprinted.

“Then I got a letter from a schoolteacher who told me that I’d written the rudest sentence in the history of children’s literature because it then said, ‘I looked into his deep brown eye.’”

Like all of his stories though, there’s a message hidden within the weird and wonderful words that Jennings hopes the reader will pick up on.

“It’s really about someone who is suffering from something, which all kids think they are, and it’s about how we can all overcome it,” he said.

'Unseen' by Paul Jennings was published in 1998.Source:News Corp Australia

Who hasn’t read this classic?Source:News Corp Australia

Cow Dung Custard:

To refresh your memory, this story is about a boy whose father uses different types of animal dung to grow huge vegetables, an idea Jennings came up with after dealing with plenty of dung in his childhood.

“When I grew up, back in the 1950s, your milk was brought around everyday by the milkman on a horse and cart and the horse would inevitably drop some droppings in the middle of the road,” he said.

“My mother would quickly give me and my little sister a shovel and brush and say, ‘Get out there and get it … before the lady next door gets it.’

“We hated it and that embarrassment that a child has about their parents is a universal thing.”

But cast aside the dung and the story is really about the relationship between a father and son.

“I had a problematic relationship with my father,” said Jennings, “I used to be a bit envious of boys who had a knockabout, friendly father.”

Now that’s a camera ... Jennings meets fans at a book signing in 1999.Source:News Limited

Wunderpants:

Another of Jennings’ stories that was adapted for Round The Twist, this one is about a boy who is teased at school because his underpants have fairies on them, but little do the bullies know that the undies actually give the boy superpowers.

“The idea came from something that happened in my life when I was a boy,” said Jennings.

“When I was growing up, everybody wore the same white underpants and my mother washed a pair of mine in with my sister’s red dress and they turned pink. In those days that was not on for a boy to have pink underpants.

“We had the school doctor come in that day and you had to strip down to your jocks and everybody gave me heaps because it looked like I had girls knickers on.”

Lucky Lips:

This is the tale of a boy who struggled getting a kiss, until he got his hands on some magic lipstick that made him irresistible to females. But like all of Jennings’ stories, there’s a tricky twist.

“There’s a girl in the story that he really wanted to get a kiss from but every time he tried things kept going wrong. He ended up kissing a mum and then a schoolteacher and finally he falls into a pig pen where he realises to his horror that it also works on female pigs.”

The inspiration behind the story came from one of Jennings’ six kids.

“One of my younger daughter’s came in one day and said that she’d seen her older sister kissing a boy under the tree outside. I said, ‘She can’t do that, she’s only 15.’

“It led me to think, what if there was someone who couldn’t get a kiss? I started off with that idea and I mucked around with it.”

Unreal! remains Paul Jennings’ most successful book — an amazing effort considering it was his first.

He’s gone on to write more than 40 books and is still one of Australia’s, if not the world’s most loved children’s authors.

“I often think of something that I believe was attributed to Michelangelo, who said that he discovers the sculptures he makes in the blocks of stone. They’re already there and he just uncovers them. That might seem a bit fanciful but I think it’s a really good metaphor for writing because the story is inside you.”

A special 30th anniversary edition of Unreal! will be published by Penguin later this year.

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