Jonathan Emmett

For everyone:
• Small children will enjoy the delightful monsters and the useless adults.
• Useless adults will relate to the frustration of bad design, inadequate instructions, and impatient small children.
• Technical writers (me) will appreciate a brilliant demonstration of what we do, and why our skills are needed.

Image: Assembling your Monster

Just like real technical documentation, the book includes:
• Delivery note
• Labels and warnings on packaging (ignored)
• Inventory of show more contents - labelled
• Exploded diagrams and sequential steps for assembly
• Distinguishing features of different models
• Switching on
• Usage instructions
• Maintenance
• Dos and don’ts
• Safety notes (near the end!)
• Troubleshooting
• Lifetime guarantee (whose - yours or the monster’s?)

Image: Danger is shown, but downplayed, at the corner of a page

Like all good instructions, the author and illustrator know their audience and appreciate the importance of context. It’s task-oriented, showing expected - and unexpected - results.

Image: Dos and Don’ts

Technical writing is not just typing!

Aged 12, my kid’s class completed a computer-based careers questionnaire that included selecting what their parents did. My kid picked something vaguely suitable for my husband, but couldn’t find technical writer (no surprise), so selected… Typist! There’s nothing wrong with typists (are there any left?), but I do no more typing than my husband and many other people.

After 25+ years and 10 national conferences, this picture book is the best and most enjoyable explanation of my job that I’ve encountered. If Jonathan Emmett submitted this instead of a CV (resumé) for a technical writing role, he should be interviewed immediately. Maybe I’ll send this book to my now adult kid to remind them what I do…

Image: Troubleshooting

Knowledge matters

Knowledge alone is not sufficient. Context matters. Hence the old joke:

Kim retired after 20 years of maintaining the crucial Uber Widget machine. A couple of years later, it broke. Many people spent hours on it, but no one could fix it, so Kim was asked to pop in. She went round the back of the machine, and after a few moments, it was running smoothly. A few days later, she submitted an invoice for £5,000. The outraged CFO called Kim to demand an itemised invoice. Kim obliged:
1. Replacement Flibblewang: £1
2. Knowing where to put it: £4,999
TOTAL £5,000

Image: Lifetime Guarantee show less

Shortly after we moved into our new home, our son started complaining about the monster who lived in his clock. It was a combination of living in a new (and creaky house — boy does this place settle at night) and an

active imagination. So I was faced with a problem: I could insist there were no monsters (and be the parent that doesn't listen), I could agree with him and go through the methods of chasing the monster away, or I could help him find a way of dealing with the monster on his own show more terms.

I chose the latter. Our son has always been a can-do person and loves to push himself. So I told him that there might in fact be a monster living in the clock but we should go to the library and figure out what type of monster it was. We read dozens of books that year and later he began to pick monster books on his own for pleasure reading.

Now with our daughter, she has grown up in a house full of monster themed picture and early chapter books. Though monsters aren't her thing, per se, she has a soft spot for the more humorous ones. One of her addition to the family collection is Monsters: An Owner's Guide by Jonathan Emmett.

Imagine if you could own a monster. Imagine if they came mail order from a catalog and were delivered right to your door. Now imagine if they required assembling. Imagine if the instructions were about as clear as the most complicated thing you can get from Ikea. Then imagine if the thing you built had a monstrous AI.

That's basically the book. It's an illustrated instruction manual. It also shows what happens when things go awry. It's short and silly and perfect for any future doctors Frankenstein. show less

When Alfie and Bonnie's mother leaves them in their warm den underneath the oak tree, warning them not to leave, the two fox cubs soon grow restless, and Bonnie begins to explore. Discovering a magical white substance coming down outside, she convinces Alfie to join her, and soon the two are cavorting through the snow-covered wood. But when its begins to get dark, and they realize they are far from home, things suddenly don't seem so fun...

Foxes in the Snow is the first book I have read from show more English author/illustrator team Jonathan Emmett and Rebecca Harry. I'm not familiar with Emmett's name, although I see he has quite a few titles to his credit, but Harry was already known to me, as she is also the illustrator of Timothy Knapman's The Winter Fox, which is on my to-read list. In any case, I found both story and artwork here charming, with a fairly standard but still appealing tale of adventurous youngsters having a magical experience in the snow, before heading home, and sweet illustrations that capture both the vulpine charm of our fox characters, and the beauty of the wintry world around them. I don't know that this one is particularly outstanding, in the world of picture-books, but as someone who loves both fox stories and wintry vistas, it definitely appealed to me. Recommended to picture-book readers with those same weaknesses. show less

Upon finishing this book the first thing I did was a quick internet search for the author's names, just to see whether he really existed or was in fact a pseudonym for Tim Burton for in my opinion The Santa Trap is up there with The Nightmare Before Christmas as a perfect alternative (and dark) Christmas story. It is certainly the perfect antidote to those saccharine sweet Christmas stories and fairy tales that get wheeled out every year, and it would be a crime if this does not one day find show more itself on the screen, whether big or small.

The Santa Trap is the story of Bradley Bartleby, a truly despicable child who, in the words of the story, was "born bad". Bradley is every spoiled and demanding child you have ever come across, all rolled into one nasty package that his parents are terrified of. As such he gets everything he wants (including an elephant as a house pet), when he wants it...... except for that one special time of the year. For Father Christmas knows about Bradley, and doesn't even bother to read the extensive list of presents Bradley demands every year. However, being a kindly old soul Santa does not want Bradley to go completely empty-handed and so each year he leaves him the same, simple gift..... a pair of socks.

Following another disappointing Christmas morning Bradley decides that enough is enough, and that he is going to set a trap for Santa, a trap that will take all year to create. And so, through Poly Bernatene's wonderfully dark illustrations we see him construct the ultimate scenario, including tigers, guillotines, explosives and trap doors. Come the following Christmas Eve Bradley then sits alone, waiting for his prey to arrive (his parents, by the way, have taken themselves off to a hotel, as their home is now far too dangerous to be living in). He sits and waits, and waits and sits, until.........

What? You think I'm going to give away the rest of the story and ruin it for you? No way!

This book is a fantastic picture story, although some younger (more delicate and fragile) children may find the concept of blowing up Father Christmas and/or feeding him to ravenous tigers a little too upsetting. Jonathan Emmett's words are funny and well paced, but for me the real strong point of the book is the illustrations. Poly Bernatene has done an incredible job in creating the image of this truly nasty boy - imagine the young Damien from The Omen, but looking fifty times as evil and devious and you will be pretty close to having a good mental picture of this young devil. show less