Andy Jones Bio

Some authors sit at a desk and write. Andy Jones writes, then gets on stage and performs what he has written, for an audience of several hundred children who have absolutely no patience for anything dull. That pressure has shaped his books in ways that most children’s publishing never experiences.

Andy performs at up to 400 shows a year in schools, libraries, and festivals all over the country, drawing on his musical background to engage, educate and entertain children and families all over Australia and New Zealand.

The result is a body of work where every page has been road-tested live, in front of real children, who vote with their laughter or their boredom.

His earliest publishing came through ABC Books.

Sizzling Hot Jokes for Kool Kids, compiled by Andy Jones and illustrated by Stephen Axelsen, was published by ABC Books for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1998.

It was the beginning of a five-book joke series that became a genuine phenomenon in Australian primary schools and libraries.

Andy’s five bestselling Hot Jokes for Kool Kids joke books sold over 500,000 copies and have now been bound into The Enormous Book of Hot Jokes for Kool Kids.

The relationship with HarperCollins followed, and deepened the catalogue considerably.

Andy is a bestselling children’s author, entertainer, musician, songwriter and comedian who performs up to 300 shows a year in schools, clubs, libraries and festivals all over Australia. His ‘What’s the Joke’ and ‘Rap and Rhyme’ shows are a high-energy mix of music, dance, rap, rhyme and audience participation. He has released six titles with HarperCollins, including the bestselling Hot Jokes for Kool Kids and The Fartionary, and six CDs of music for ABC Kids.

The Fartionary is probably the book that most encapsulates Andy Jones’s publishing instinct.

The bestselling Fartionary elevated the already popular topic of flatulence and blew this gassy phenomenon to the next level by explaining and exploding the facts, science and language with a huge dose of ripe raspberry humour.

It was followed by The Burptionary.

The Burptionary has also been recorded by Andy as a read-through CD for Bolinda Audio.

Both titles blend genuine science with comedy, a combination that gets reluctant readers past the first page faster than almost any other approach in children’s publishing.

Moving from pure humour into chapter fiction, Andy wrote The Adventures of Scootaboy & Skatergirl.

The Adventures of Scootaboy & Skatergirl is Andy’s first chapter book and pairs up two unlikely characters in a series of funny, crazy and peculiar situations with the focus being on friendship, teamwork, fun and humour. Scootaboy has been compared to Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory meets Kevin Rudd, and Skatergirl is a mix of Joan Jett and Avril Lavigne.

The activity book The Really Ripper Razzle Dazzle Big Book of Fun followed a different format altogether.

It invites readers to complete a unique mix of drawings, poetry, design, and original artworks and stories, everything from new yoga positions to funky street signs.

Most recently in book form, Andy released The Awesome Book of Rap, Rhyme and Putrid Poetry in November 2016, illustrated by Jules Faber.

The book is the funniest collection of rap, rhyme, riddles and poems from the bestselling author of The Enormous Book of Hot Jokes for Kool Kids and The Fartionary.

A music and spoken word CD was also released to accompany it.

The live performance side of the work runs alongside publishing rather than separately from it.

Andy became well known for his ‘Funky Monkey Show’ and five children’s music CDs, which were released by the ABC for Kids label and toured nationally.

His ‘What’s the Joke Show’ was created to be performed to children and families in libraries and festivals, a mix of music, comedy and literacy with a focus on humour and joke-telling that clocked up over 1,000 performances in three years.

His Electric Music show takes a different approach again:

students are involved in the creation and performance of music as diverse as hip hop, disco, Bollywood, Pacific Island, Arabic belly dance, Latin, rock and the blues, explored and performed by Andy and the students together.

Whether performing and hosting the Darling Harbour New Year’s Eve family celebrations, the Adelaide Festival, Kids Day Out, or a local primary school or library, Andy takes his original, entertaining mix of music, humour, literacy and fun to children and families of Australia and beyond.

It is a career that is harder to categorise than most in children’s media. Andy Jones is, simultaneously, an author whose books sell in the hundreds of thousands, a touring musician with a substantial ABC Kids catalogue, and a live performer who has played some of Australia’s most prominent family festivals. The books and the shows feed each other: a child who sees the show wants the book, and a child who reads the book wants to see the show.