The Wonky Donkey

Stuff reports:

A Scottish Granny’s laugh has sent sales of a Kiwi book through the roof.

Video of Scottish grandmother Janice Clark laughing uncontrollably while trying to read Kiwi kids book The Wonky Donkey to her grandson has the world scrabbling to get a copy. 

Kiwi author Craig Smith says sales of his ode to a three legged donkey had “gone through the roof” since the video of hit the internet – so much so both Amazons UK and US ran out of copies. 

“After nearly 10 years, we are doing another 40,000 print run…. It looks likely to be on best-selling lists again. I don’t know how common it is for that to happen.”

Smith said he took care of international orders from his home.

“Usually I do a few of my different books as packages and it would be 4 or 5 a week. In the past five days I’ve had 2000 orders.

That is very cool.

Speaking to UK newspaper The Guardian on Monday, Smith called Clark’s video “gold”.

“Watching Janice read and laugh was just delightful,” Smith said. “Like many, her infectious laugh had me laughing too.”

The clip shows Clark with her grandson on her lap reading from the book, which uses increasingly silly adjectives to tell the tale of the three legged donkey.

By the time Clark is describing the “honky-tonky, winky, wonky donkey” she is crying with laughter.

I know the book pretty much off by heart as it is one of Benjamin’s favourites.

As each description gets longer the final one is:

He only had three legs, one eye and he liked to listen to country music and he was quite tall and slim and he smelt really bad and that morning he got up early and he hadn’t had any coffee and he was always getting up to mischief but he was quite good looking

He was a spunky hanky panky cranky stinky dinky lanky honky tonky winky wonky donkey

A really really cool and clever kid’s book.