The Story Machine

Reds love being red. Yellows love being yellow. And Blues love being blue. The problem is that they just don’t like each other. But one day, along comes a different colour who likes Reds, Yellows and Blues, and suddenly everything starts to change. Maybe being different doesn’t mean you can’t be friends …

Elliott is a boy who likes to find things and, one day, he stumbles across a machine. At first, he can’t work out what the machine is for – it doesn’t beep or buzz like all his other machines and it doesn’t have an ON/OFF button. Then, quite by accident, Elliott makes the machine work. The machine makes letters! Elliott thinks it must be a story machine but, sadly, Elliott isn’t very good at letters and words. How can he make magical stories without them? But, wait, some of the letters look like pictures. Elliott is good at pictures and, as he discovers, pictures make stories.

An inspiring, uplifting picture book about the simple joys of a typewriter in a world of hi-tech machines. Perfect for fans of Oliver Jeffers.

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing

About the author:

Tom McLaughlin has been an author for over 10 years now. He writes and illustrates picture books and chapter books for Key Stages 1 and 2. Tom has been nominated for the Greenaway Medal twice and his debut chapter book also received nomination for the Branford Boase Award. The Accidental series has sold over 110,000 copies in the UK alone and been translated into 12 different languages. The Accidental Prime Minister was shortlisted on the Shrewsbury Bookfest Book Award 2016. As well as working in children’s books, Tom also worked as political cartoonist, animator, script writer and written several columns for The Guardian.

Tom is leading creative writing workshops in primary schools across Shropshire for the Shrewsbury Bookfest Schools’ Week 2021 project.