"It's an odd word - funny. When I was a child and I was talking with friends one of us might say, 'I've got something funny to tell you.' And we'd say back, 'Funny ha ha or funny peculiar?' Because that word, 'funny,' can mean weird, strange, yukky as well as meaning laugh out loud, and it seems to me that most families, no, ALL families are a bit odd! Maybe that's why authors like writing about them so much. Who do you think is the oddest in your family? Be careful, perhaps it's you.
Most of us love reading about families because we can measure our own families against all those others out there and we laugh and cry and grumble and get angry and split our sides as we read about them and we think - I'd never be like that family! But in truth we are probably more like them than we'd like to admit, so watch out."
Jeremy Strong is the author of over 80 children's books, including the series The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog and My Brother's Favourite Bottom series. His latest book is My Brother's Famous Bottom Gets Crowned and he's on the hunt for the Nation's Funniest Kid. The deadline for entries is Friday 19 July and full details of how to enter are at jeremystrong.co.uk/pages/nationsfunniestkid2013.
1. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend
One of the most famous and funniest families in Britain. Adrian Mole has been tickling us with his frustrated life and unfulfilled ambitions for years. Sue Townsend has a way of picking out the tiniest details and magnifying them until they gigantic proportions. Bliss.
2. Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by AA Milne
Ok, so they are not exactly a "proper" family but Christopher Robin's toy animals always feel like a family. Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, Tigger, Kanga and Roo have delighted readers since the 1930s. The stories are warm and funny to both adults and children. My two favourites both centre around Eeyore - playing pooh-sticks and getting Tigger down from the tree.
3. The Georgia Nicolson Diaries by Louise Rennison
With titles like Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging and Knockedd out By My Nunga-Nunga's, Lousie Rennison took us by storm. A kind of girly version of Adrian Mole, but with feisty, sparky, irreverent Georgia as heroine, these stories are a great read. Boys - read them! If you want to understand girls all will be revealed!
4. Matilda by Roald Dahl
Hmmm. It required some hard thinking to decide which of Dahl's funny ha-ha and funny peculiar families I should choose, but the Wormwoods are right up there with the best of them, or should that be the worst? Even Matilda, heroine as she is, has a dark side. Pure Dahl, pure gold.
5. Quick! Let's Get Out of Here by Michael Rosen
Ok, so this is a book of poems. But many of them are about Michael Rosen's own family and nobody, but nobody writes better family poems than Michael. There are many funny, no, hilarious ones too - the chocolate cake incident, smuggling booty inside the watch and so non. Michael makes the most astute and cringingly correct observations about how we behave with our parents and siblings.
6. My Family and other Animals by Gerald Durrell
This is a classic from the 50s and important to me because it kick started the reading habit for me when I was about 13. (I'd stopped more or less, for a couple of years.) It's a beautifully observed account of the time when, as a young boy, Durrell's family moved to Corfu to live. (Sigh! If only....!) Crazy characters, daft dialogue and animals everywhere. It's all true too. Full of warm Mediterranean sunshine and equally warm people.
7. The Charlie and Lola Series by Lauren Child
Here's something for younger children, but adults will love these stories too. Lauren Child focuses on those small things that happen when we are young and spins wonderfully warm and funny stories out of them, then illustrates them with perfectly matched pictures of her own. (I wish I could draw.)
8. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
Greg Heffley and his family is well known to millions around the globe and rightly so, but this family will also be familiar because in many ways it is like so many, with constant internal strife, warfare, coming back together, splitting apart again, sibling treachery and so on. There's laughter on every page of Jeff Kinney's monster success.
9. Fizzlebert Stump by AF Harrold
This is a personal favourite from a relative newcomer on the children's writing scene. AF Harrold writes with a very distinctive, unusual and utterly charming voice in this warm and funny tale of the boy who runs away from the circus to join the library. (Yes, you read that correctly!) Meet the lion with rubber teeth and Fish the sea-lion - all part of Fizzlebert Stump's extended family and what a fine family they are too. Fabulous.
10. Funny Bones by Allan Ahlberg
A longstanding series of several titles, Funny Bones, is the first in line and introduces us to this wonderful collection of skeletons. The story rattles along (sorry!) and is matched with terrific illustrations. Great stuff for a youngster's bedtime story and adults will love reading it out loud. And when that one is finished there are more titles to look forward to.