Moone Boy: The Blunder Years

Name: William Joseph
Price range: $

by Chris O’Dowd and Nick Vincent Murphy, illustrated by Walter Giampaglia

Interest age: 7+
Reading age: 8+

Published by Pan Macmillan, 2015

Around the world
Diaries and journals
Funny

About this book

Outnumbered at home by his family of girls and bullied at school, Martin Moone is in need of a friend, fast. An imaginary friend sounds like the perfect solution for some instant moral support but Martin’s imagination isn’t very good so when he hears about the catalogue of ‘IFs’ just waiting to be matched up with their ‘realsies’ he’s raring to go.

Loopy Lou isn’t exactly what he had in mind, he’s over-excitable, won’t stop rhyming and calls Martin Moo-Moo - he has to go back. But clerical errors regarding IFs have to fixed by the appropriate clerk - and when Customer Service Representative 263749 arrives to sort out the paperwork, Martin finally finds the friend his imagination couldn’t. Loopy Lou is still causing trouble and those bullies won’t quit, can CustServRep263 really help with Martin’s problem?

Genuinely bizarre and ridiculously funny, this is one of the maddest books of the year. The concoction of authors (and non-imaginary) friends Chris and Nick, creators of the Emmy-winning TV programme of the same name, Moone Boy is probably about friendship and family but is far too much fun to be truly sentimental.

Packed with daft-jokes and non-stop banter, Martin’s Moone’s life is a mad hatter’s tea party, with terrible cereal instead of tea. There’s a grown-up edge to the humour that will really connect with boys on the verge of their teenage years - don’t be fooled by the diary style layout. Loud, crazy and unapologetically Irish with brilliant sketches and a stylish production to boot - great craic!

About the author

Chris O'Dowd is an actor, writer and director. He is well known for his starring role in Bridesmaids, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA Rising Star Award and a Screen Actor's Guild Award for 'Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture'. He won the Irish Film and Television Award for 'Best Supporting Actor - Film'. Chris also starred in Wayne Blair's The Sapphires, which broke Australian box office records.

Chris starred in the TV series Family Tree and also lends his voice to Chris Wedge's animated film, Epic. He was also seen starring in Lena Dunham's HBO series Girls and Judd Apatow's This is 40.

Chris's other television credits include starring in the cult comedy series The IT Crowd, plus the critically acclaimed series Crimson Petal & the White.

About the author

Nick Vincent Murphy is an Irish writer from Kilkenny, who is now based in Los Angeles. In 2007, he got his first break as a writer on the acclaimed television comedy-drama series The Running Mate, which won 'Best Single Drama' at the Irish Film and Television Awards. In 2010, his first feature film, Hideaways, was produced. It won the Méliès d'Argent Award for 'Best European Film' at the Strasbourg Film Festival.

Aside from working with Chris O'Dowd on the Moone Boy books, Nick has TV projects in development with Aardman Animation and Tiger Aspect, as well as film projects in the US.