You've probably heard of a few inventors and their bright ideas..*Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone *George Stevenson and his Rocket (which was really a train) *John Logie Baird and his television. But have you heard that...*Bell didn't invent the phone, but he did make a weird machine out of hay and a human ear *Stevenson didn't invent the train, but he did spend a lot of time collecting gas in bladders *Baird's telly was useless, and so were his thermostatic socks? Yes, even though they're dead, inventors are still full of surprises-and the ten in this book are more surprising than most. Now you can get the inside story from their long lost notebooks, read the ground-breaking news stories as their inventions hit the headlines, and find out all about the bright ideas that changed the world.
Clive Goddard didn't know he was a writer until this book happened. He thought he was a cartoonist. It was probably all those years spent illustrating 'Horrible' books for Scholastic that gave him this idea.
Fintan Fedora (The World's Worst Explorer) is his first work of children's fiction, partly inspired by his own love of travel and disastrous experiences. (ie. Being chased by an angry ostrich in Swaziland, having his rucksack soaked by a leaky toilet in Holland, getting heatstroke in Namibia, food poisoning in Thailand and being robbed in China.)
Clive splits his time between Oxford, UK and Denver, US where he draws, writes and practices sleeping for long periods of time. He is yet to win either The Booker or The Pulitzer prize but has a Blue Peter badge for colouring-in.
