The Quigleys in a Spin - Softcover

Mason, Simon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 044087100X ISBN 13: 9780440871002

Verlag: Yearling (imprint of Random House Children's Books), 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Five more stories about the irrepressible Quigleys (and including a surprise guest appearance from next-door neighbour's cat, Fatbrain). Will makes a huge effort to get on with the sullen Robinson Potts, an unwelcome visitor on the family's weekend away. Lucy desperately hopes that her birthday party will occur without mishap even though Dad is promising to make it an event to remember...and Mum gets stuck on the roof - with Fatbrain.

In the fourth book of the series, Simon Mason reveals the charm and humour in the everyday life of an ordinary (yet unique) family. These are perfect stories for reading aloud, and for young children to read by themselves.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Simon Mason is an author of children's and adult books. His first adult novel, a black comedy entitled The Great English Nude, won the Betty Trask first novel award and Moon Pie was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction prize. Running Girl is his first story starring Garvie Smith.

Simon lives in Oxford with his wife and their two children.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Dad's Big Toe

Dad was a hard worker. He had a little office upstairs, and he worked there all day and sometimes all evening. At night he was usually tired.

Lucy and Will sat in their bedroom, watching him being tired as he searched for a story to read.

'You're all full of yawns,' Lucy said to him.

'The funny thing about yawns,' Will said thoughtfully, 'is they're not like sneezes.' He began to explain the difference between a yawn and a sneeze, but it was hard to hear him because he was lying squished face-down on the floor with his feet up on Lucy's bed and his head under the bedside table. Will liked to invent new positions.

'Will!' Dad said. 'What are you doing?'

'Relaxing.'

'Relax on your own bed,' Lucy said.

'I can't get my feet on the top bunk from here,' Will said, spitting out carpet fur. They began to bicker.

'No bickering,' Dad said. 'I'm too tired.'

'We're not asking you to bicker,' Will said. 'Lucy and I can manage on our own.'

'I mean I'm too tired to deal with you bickering,' Dad said, but he couldn't make himself sound cross because at that moment he began to yawn. In fact it was such a long, stretchy, blind sort of yawn that when he had finished it and could see again, Will had finished bickering with Lucy and had gone downstairs to bicker with Mum instead, and the bedroom was quiet.

'Are you going to read to me now?' Lucy asked. 'Can you read if you're full of yawns?'

Dad sat on the bed, yawning. 'I'll try,' he said.

Five minutes later, as he was saying, 'For the first time in his life he was face to face with a silk-monkey,' he fell asleep. He didn't say he was going to fall asleep, he just did. He slid slowly sideways along the wall and sprawled on Lucy's bed with his eyes closed and his chin on his chest.

Lucy crawled out from under her duvet to have a closer look. 'Dad, you've fallen asleep,' she whispered.

Dad didn't disagree. Lucy watched him for a while. His face was slack and he was breathing through his nose in deep, whispery breaths. She put her finger out to feel the breaths, and they were warm and damp. She grinned to herself. Then she put her finger behind his right ear, and tickled him. A puzzled, frowny look went across his face, but he didn't wake up. Lucy grinned again. She tickled him behind his other ear, and in his sleep he smacked his lips together as if he were tasting something odd, and Lucy had to put her hand over her mouth to stop herself laughing. Then she sat back and looked at him a bit longer while she decided what to do next.

What would it be like, she wondered, if she tried to take his shoes off without waking him up? She thought it would be hard.

But it turned out to be easy.

Then she wondered if she could take off his socks without waking him up, and she did that too.

His bare feet dangled over the edge of the bed, and she sat looking at them, and grinning. Naturally she thought about tickling them, but she had a better idea. A much better idea. She got up and went to her drawer where she kept her precious things, and searched through it until she found what she wanted, and went back and sat cross-legged next to Dad's feet, and got to work.

At first she found it difficult, and she made a few mistakes. It was hard to keep her hands steady all the time. But in ten minutes she had painted all Dad's toenails in her favourite purple sparkly nail polish.

Feeling very pleased with herself, she sat looking at the gleaming toes. They were much nicer purple and sparkly, she thought. She thought all toes should be sparkly purple, even Dad's. And then, quite suddenly, she thought that Dad wouldn't think so, and she was scared at what she'd done. Downstairs she could hear Mum and Will coming to the end of their argument, and she began to panic. As quickly and carefully as she could, she put Dad's socks back on, and his shoes, and just as she was finishing doing up the laces Dad woke with a grunt, saying, 'And the sulky-minkey said . . . the silly-money . . . Oh.'

He sat on the edge of the bed, looking baffled. 'I think I must have nodded off for a few seconds,' he said at last. Lucy waited anxiously for him to ask her what she'd been doing while he was asleep, but he didn't. He tucked her into bed, kissed her good-night, and went downstairs. A few minutes later Will came up to read on his own, and he didn't ask her what she'd been doing either. She lay in bed, thinking nervously about what would happen when Dad found out that his toes were purple and sparkly. She felt very worried, but somehow it didn't stop her being tired, and, before she knew it, she was asleep.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Yearling (imprint of Random House Children's Books)
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 044087100X
• ISBN 13: 9780440871002
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar