Martin Bridge

Martin Bridge and his friends, Alex and Stuart, are big fans of Zip Rideout, a cartoon astronaut superhero. They eat Zip Rideout Space Flakes every morning and watch his television show every afternoon. They also enjoy launching model rockets, squirting Faster Blasters and humming Zip’s theme song. The trouble with Martin’s world is that these routine things often go wrong, or as Stuart would say, “Ka-boom!” Yet through it all, Martin discovers that he is so much more than his superhero.

Jessica created Martin Bridge after her husband, who was a leader of a boys’ troop, described their latest misadventure that involved exploding rockets. ‘Smithereens’ is the result of that story.

Other Martin stories developed when Jessica’s colleagues shared experiences that didn’t go according to plan, such as giving a gift to the wrong person; a friend showing up for a birthday party on the wrong day; missing the bus for an important school field trip; falsely accusing a parent of throwing out a toy, or a pet parrot flying out the window in the middle of winter.

Everyday, all around her, things go wrong. Jessica has lots of Martin material to choose from, and over 100,000 books have sold in Canada, the United States and Australia!

Image used by permission of Kids Can Press. Text © 2005 Jessica Scott Kerrin, illustrations © 2005 Joseph Kelly.