Written by Meg McKinlay

Walker Books Australia, 2012
Ages 8-12

 

$500 prize money! Yes! This Christmas decorating comp is too easy. Decorations? No sweat. Strategy? Who needs it? What on earth could go wrong?

A hilarious new Lightning Strikes story featuring Nathan, Ronnie and Weasel, the characters readers came to know, and roll their eyes at, in Going for Broke and The Big Dig.

 

What Readers Are Saying:

” … an Australian Christmas romp ideal for primary school boys! This is an engaging and amusing read bound to appeal to readers both young and young at heart; an excellent stocking filler.”
— writingWA

“I can so easily imagine this book converting kids who used to believe they didn’t enjoy reading. It’s a fun romp with believable characters whose adventures make us giggle … an excellent choice for a classroom or library read-aloud serial, one where kids will be urging “just one more chapter”.

– Susan Stephenson, The Book Chook

 

Resources

Download classroom ideas

Lightning Strikes series website

The earlier adventures of Nathan, Ronnie and Weasel: Going for Broke, The Big Dig

 

Behind the Story

This book began, as many of my stories do, from the collision of two disconnected ideas. The first thing was seeing my house on Google Maps and thinking it would be funny if something weird/embarrassing had been happening when the photo was taken, which would then be on the Internet for everyone to see. The second was knowing some people who moved, without realising, into a street where everyone goes all-out with their Christmas lights. If you read the book, it’ll be obvious how those ideas interacted to form the basis of the story.