It's a hot summer day and Gary is hungry. The beach is packed with people...and packed with people's lunches. Though he's been known to eat everything from minnows to garbage, it's beach lunches Gary loves most of all. With his patented seagull cunning, Gary takes increasingly ridiculous measures to trick a young boy into sharing his lunch. Will the boy hand over his ketchup chips and watermelon?

This uproarious read-aloud from beloved Ontario-based songwriter and entertainer, better known by his stage name, B. A. Johnston, will have parents hugging their beach coolers a little tighter and kids shouting "SHOO, BIRD! SHOO!" Halifax-based illustrator-cartoonist Paul Hammond provides bright and bold illustrations and hand-lettered embellishments for a salty good read.

Christian "BA" Johnston is a songwriter and former frycook who lives in a hundred year old house which is about to fall over with his wife, dinosaur-obsessed child, and two very obese cats. He enjoys outdated technology and eating ketchup chips on a beach as his child chases the seagulls towards other people. This is his first book.

Christian Johnston's profile page

Paul Hammond is a Canadian artist, illustrator, and comics creator currently living in Toronto Ontario, by way of Halifax Nova Scotia. He was educated at NSCAD University (BFA 2005), and cut his teeth designing & screen-printing gig posters. He thinks mistakes are nice, and likes to leave them in when he's allowed.

Paul Hammond's profile page

"A fun and amusing book, Gary the Seagull might make a good bedtime story for kids. There isn't an overarching message or lesson; rather, it's an easy read that would be enjoyable for most kids. There are some bigger words that could make it useful for grade school-age children who are practicing reading. The bright and bold cartoon style illustrations depict all the colours that one would see at the beach. The wider beach scenes also show a diversity in the people who are there." —Canadian Review of Materials (Winnipeg, MB)