What I Learnt Today

What is the best selling children’s book of all time?

Our sister site (?daughter site) wiltjunior.com today posted the top 20. The number one book has sold 14,000,000 copies since it was introduced as one of the first Little Golden Books in 1942. That is 5 million more than the next placed book (Charlotte’s Web). It featured this rather naughty puppy.

When it comes to dogs and Little Golden Books, I must say I preferred the more adventursome Scuppers, the Sailor Dog

or the more independent Mr Dog, the Dog who Belonged to Himself

The wiltjunior list  has no Noddys, Wild Things or Pooh Bears. No Far Away Trees, Wind in the Willows, or Narnia’s. No puddings, wombats or possums – in fact no marsupials of any sort.

What book would you add? Let us know in the comments.

I have been worried about my sister. Today she sent me this email

I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me today, and we all could probably use more calm in our lives. Some doctor on tv this morning said the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started. So I looked around my house to see things I’d started and hadn’t finished and, before leaving for work this morning, I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, a pockage of Prungles, tha mainder of bot Prozic and Valiuminun scriptins, the res of the chesescke an a box a chocletz. Yu haf no idr how bludy fablus I feel rite now. Plaese sned dhis orn to dem yu fee ar in ned ov iennr pisss. An telum,u fukin luvum.!!

I’m not worried any more. Sounds like she’s doing much better.

Ernest Hemingway – author, hunter, fisherman and drinker – is also famous for being terse with his sentences. It is therefore appropriate that some say he considered that his best work of fiction was also his shortest. It consists of just six words.

Peter Miller tells the story:

More than thirty years ago at the beginning of my career, I had lunch with a well-established newspaper syndicator who told me the following story: Ernest Hemingway was lunching at the Algonquin, sitting at the famous “round table” with several writers, claiming he could write a six-word-long short story. The other writers balked. Hemingway told them to ante up ten dollars each. If he was wrong, he would match it; if he was right, he would keep the pot. He quickly wrote six words on a napkin and passed it around. Papa won the bet.

Hemingways best work?

For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn.

Microfiction is a style of writing based on extreme brevity. It is a subset of flash fiction. If short is good, ultra-short is better.

Try these:

One Thousand Words or Less 
http://www.flashfictiononline.com/

Fifty Words or Less
http://fiftywordstories.com/

Two Sentence Stories
http://www.twosentencestories.com/

Six Word Stories
http://www.sixwordstories.net/