Don't call Me ishmael!
By michael Gerard Bauer
This is a book about a 14 year old boy who moves schools and learns how to avoid the school Bully, Barry Bagsley. It is a tough year.......Will Ishmael get eaten up by the school bully or will he rise up and survive the year of torture?
$ 10.99
- This book was published in 2006.
- Reprinted in 2006 (twice) 2007 (twice) 2008 (twice) 2009 (twice) 2010 (twice)
eight Interesting facts from The Author's point of view
1. Ishmael’s birthdate is revealed in Chapter 3 as being August 1st. This means he shares a birthday with Herman Melville author of Moby Dick.
2. On the front cover of the original Australian edition just above Ringo’s head, there are some stylised initials scratched into the desk. They are J.T.B. for Joseph Thomas Bauer – my son who was the cover designer. (Not visible in the image below because Joe photo-shopped it in later.)
3. A banana skin is visible at the top left-hand corner of the back cover of the original Australian edition. It ended up there because Joe had a banana for morning tea while he was putting the cover design together for the photo.
4. When Ishmael writes his list of Five Amazing Facts About Me, Number 4 is “When I was an altar boy in Year Four I used to faint during the Service.” He stole that one straight from me!
5. Kelly Faulkner is named in honour of the American writer William Faulkner whom I studied a lot at University. For a while there, I thought of naming more characters after literary heroes but decided against it.
6. Even though James Scobie is perhaps one of the most unusual boys in the book, he is the only one who was based, at least initially, on someone I’d really taught.
7. In my early planning of the storyline of DCM Ishmael, one of the characters was going to die.
8. Miss Tarango’s surname is a combination of Tango (the dance) and Tarago (the car) because she’s such a passionate, energetic and revved-up teacher.
Cheers Michael