Kids into Books: Dead Man's Head

Author: Jack Lasenby

Illustrator: David Elliot, Jenny Cooper

Publisher: Longacre Press, $14.95

Age: 10+ years


He stared after the dwindling dot of the guard's van, the penny hot in his hand. It had been under the express eight times and was squashed leaf-thin and huge.

"You keep off my lines, Denny Price, or I'll kick your backside!"

"Ugh! Ugh!" Denny scratched and jumped up and down, snatched a scrap of red cardboard and shiny brass off the other line, and ran after Polly among the oak trees of the plantation. He hadn't just flattened his penny.

In his mind he had also blown up the Rotorua Express. At school yesterday Mr Welsh had read them a bit from The Seven Pillars of Wisdom where Lawrence of Arabia blew a Turkish train off the tracks in the Great War.

Denny was interested in blowing up things. he'd removed the pellets from his father's shotgun cartridges, the heads from his twenty-two and three-nought-three bullets, and tried to blow up the charges, only nothing happened.

The best explosion so far was a sealed tin of water on a fire in the backyard. That had gone off with a decent bang and scared his sister Betty who was telling him to stop whatever he was doing. It served her right. She always told on him.