One Magic Night
by S. C. George  illustrated by Ebbe Fog

This story, which is set in a fishing village, is the first ofthree about life in 
Sweden. The second will be set on a farm and the third in the city of Stockholm, the 
capital of Sweden.

Marstrand Fortress, "Karlsten", with one of the entrances from the northern side.

Gunnar Andersson had climbed the one hundred and seventy-two steps of the grim tower 
of Marstrand Fortress.
Once, before fire had destroyed it, it had been the greatest fortress in 
the north. It stood on a rocky island off the
coast of Sweden, one hundred and thirty miles south of Norway.
Seagulls wheeled and cried above the boy, as he stood on the top step and 
looked down. It was a still day; the waves
made hardly any noise as they broke on the rocks below. There were islands as far as 
he could see.
The old fishing village of Marstrand lay beneath the fort. It was no 
longer as important as it used to be, but Gunnar's father still earned a living from 
the sea. He owned the fishing boat which was tied to the wharf below the line of 
houses.
Gunnar, like every boy in Marstrand, had the sea in his blood, and he had 
his own dinghy. Yet even the best
fishermen had to take care that they didn't get lost among the many islands 
along the coast. The danger was
specially great when the days were short and the long nights dark. 
Mr Andersson was a fisherman, as the men in his family had always been, but he did not 
want 
Gunnar to
become a fisherman. Gunnar didn't want to become one either, though he might go to sea 
for a year 
or two after
leaving school, as do many Swedish boys. What Gunnar wanted most of all was to become 
an architect.
Gunnar had learned as much as the Marstrand school could teach him, and he was to have 
gone to a 
secondary
school at Gothenburg as a day-boy. There are not many boarding schools in Sweden, and 
it had been 
decided  that
Gunnar was to live with his aunt when the summer term began.
 It was Walpurgis Eve - the last day of April. It was a day for rejoicing, because it 
marked the end of winter and
the coming of spring. But Gunnar was very sad. His
father had expected the schools to arrive off the
coast, but they had not come. Now they had no fish to sell,
and they would have no money. If father had
owned a large boat he could have sailed to the seas off the
coast of Iceland, where there were plenty of fish. But he
had only a small boat. He couldn't take it far out to sea,
because the big waves might sink it.
Gunnar and his family would not starve. They would receive help from the Government. 
But how would 
Gunnar be able
to go to secondary school? Lessons were free, as in all Swedish public schools, but it 
would cost money to live away from home. His aunt in Gothenburg was not rich. She 
would need money to feed Gunnar, and to buy him 
new clothes
and a bicycle.
The Andersson's house was very old. Gunnar's grandfather still lived with them, and it 
had belonged to his grandfather, and goodness knows how many Anderssons before him.

Typical old street in the town

During the summer when many visitors came to the town, Gunnar's mother made a little 
extra money by letting one of the rooms.
It had been a bitter winter. Bad storms had lashed the coast and kept the little boats 
from going out 
to sea. Money
was scarce, and this very morning, the last day of winter, his father had said, "I'm 
sorry, Gunnar, 
but we can't afford to
send you to Gothenburg after all. You must find a job on the island to help us out ... 
Perhaps next 
year," he added,
as Gunnar's face fell.
"There's still time for the fish to come in," Gunnar said, trying to be brave.
"Not unless Walpurgis works some magic for us," Mr Andersson said.
St Walpurgis was an English missionary who went to Germany in the eighth century. 
People came from 
far and near
to visit the cave where she was buried. People believed that she could protect them 
from black magic; they also believed she had been a magician herself.
Today, huge bonfires are lit on Walpurgis Eve, and people stand there and give thanks 
for the coming 
of spring 
and the return of the sun.
From the top of the tower, Gunnar could see piles of wood and branches stacked on the 
beach, 
ready to be lit. All
along the coast, bonfires like this had been prepared. Gunnar wondered if the old 
Vikings had lit 
such fires on
Walpurgis Eve. They must have seemed like magic beacons welcoming home their longboats 
from distant lands.
And there really was magic in the air. The people had been starved of sunshine during 
the long winter
but now they were excited by the coming of spring. It was already in the clear air, 
the sharp, salty 
tang of  the sea,
and the young, fresh grass that had appeared on the hills.
A breeze blew Gunnar's fair hair over his eyes. He began to feel less sad. He felt 
that anything could happen on a day like this. Something must happen.
Gunnar grew excited, because he was that their
bad luck was going to change. He hurried  down the steps of the tower, and raced back 
to the red brick cottage where
 he lived. People laughed to see him in such a hurry, for
they knew just how he felt.
His parents laughed at his shining eyes when he burst into the room.
"Have they come?" Gunnar cried.
"Who?" smiled his mother.

Marstrand Town and the fortress from one of the other islands

"The fish, of course," Gunnar said. He was beginning to feel sad again.
"If they had, would my nets be hanging outside against the wall?" asked his father. 
"No, the sea hasn't  been our friend this year."
Gunnar had been out at night with his father. On a black night, when the wind blew 
cold over the little
boat, home was a wonderfully cosy place to think about.
Inside the front door and on the left was the "best" room. In it was a big chest and a 
large wardrobe 
for their clothes.
The wardrobe had flowers painted on it. This room was used only for parties. Opposite 
was the living 
room where they
had their meals. In front of the window stood a long table where they ate. Gunnar's 
father sat in a heavy wooden chair which had carvings of 
animals on its
back, the date 1790, and beneath that the name Leif Andersson.
A door by the stove led into a kitchen, which had a floor of cobble stones. Gunnar's 
room lay behind 
the stove, and it
was warmed by it.
The cottage had been improved from time to time, and the spaces for the beds had been 
made larger. In 
the old days
people had slept half-sitting up. The people used to draw their water from the well in 
the tiny 
courtyard outside and
they used to light their houses with lamps or candles. Today they had tap water and 
electricity.
Gunnar went out again, feeling sad and disappointed. He went down to the beach, and 
once again the 
magic of
Walpurgis Eve filled him with excitement. As though in a dream, he pushed his dinghy 
into the sea,climbed in. He felt
so full of energy that he rowed hard for a time Then he hoisted the little sail and 
let the wind take 
him where it liked.
 Island after island floated past. There were thousands of
them along the coast. At last he was in the open sea. The
wind blew stronger, making the boat buck, as though it was
alive. Gunnar started singing at the top of his voice. He
knew now why he had come: to find the fish and carry
back the good news to Marstrand.
But there was no sign of the shoals, and around him was empty sea. There was not one 
trawler in sight. 
The pale sun
was now dropping low in the west, and the wind was colder and stronger. Gunnar stopped 
singing. What 
a fool he had
been to think that anything special could happen on Walpurgis Eve! He must turn back.
And then, just above the horizon, what he thought had been a little white cloud began 
to move towards him, against the wind.

Marstrand skerries, looking west, as seen from the fortress

Gunnar was alert now. He no longer thought of returning home. He went on. The cloud 
drew nearer, and
Gunnar saw that it was made up of thousands of sea birds.
They kept screaming, dropping to the sea, and rising again
with fish in their bills or in their claws.
The sea was blue with shining fish. The water boiled and bubbled around the boat, as 
the huge shoals 
of
mackerel moved on in their spring migration. They were packed so close together that 
some were pushed 
out of the
water. The sea birds gorged themselves. It was easy fishing for them, and it would be 
just as easy 
for the fishermen.
Gunnar turned his boat about. The light was fading, but he was sure that he would find 
his way home.
He thought of the excitement in the village when the people had his good 
news. The fishermen would drop what they
were doing and would race for the boats. There would be a lot of loud 
talking and laughter, and then the engines would
begin chugging. The sails alone would not carry them quickly enough to the 
shoals. And when they returned, with
their boats full of fish, they would have Gunnar to thank for it. Gunnar was so 
excited with the good news that he was taking home that he almost forgot that he could 
now go to secondary school 
at Gothenburg.
Then, he suddenly sat up, feeling very surprised. Why had he not yet caught 
sight of land?
At first he was not frightened, although it was almost dark and he could not see very 
far. But he became worried when the dark shape of an island slid by, and he did not 
recognise it. Now he began passing more islands, but he could not see them until he 
had almost run aground. He was lost.
If he had seen lights, he would have rowed to the shore to find out where 
he was, but there seemed to be nobody
living on any of the islands. He was afraid that if he went too close, a 
sudden gust of wind might blow his boat on to
the rocks.
He knew that he was near the mainland, but that was all. Had he sailed too 
far to the north? If he had sailed too far to
the south, surely he would have seen the lights of Gothenburg in the sky.
He would have given anything to have been safe at home. He began to know 
fear. What use was his good news about
the fish if he could not even find Marstrand? His father and mother would 
be worrying about him. He was cold and
hungry, for he had not eaten since breakfast.
One thought was worrying him. If he did get back, he would have to tell 
everyone that he had been lost. This would be very hard for him to do, for he was a 
proud boy. Was he not Gunnar Andersson of Marstrand, the son of a
fine fisherman?
He was feeling very sad, when a light suddenly shone in the darkness. It grew and sent 
flames up in the air. The first
of the Walpurgis Eve bonfires had been lit. It was followed by another, and another, 
and still more, until all the coast
was lit up by the fires burning on the hills and beaches.
Gunnar now knew where he was. The fires he could see were burning on an island just 
north of Marstrand. All its
bathing beaches and picnic places had fires tonight.
 Gunnar began to sing again. Good old Walpurgis! He
had known all the time that her magic would work. He
began to row home as fast as he could. He would still be
in time to light his own bonfire to thank her for the help
she had given him!

The Long Walk Home
by Nan Medlicott  illustrated by Graham Percy

Kathy was the thinnest girl in the whole school. All the other girls and boys told her 
that. The big Thomson boy with the squeaky voice and the new whiskers round his mouth 
called out each time he saw her, "Hi, Skinny, I saw you yesterday hiding behind a 
blade of grass."
Perhaps she made herself so thin because she walked and talked so much. She 
had a long walk home even after
she got out of the school bus at the village stop. In the winter it was 
growing dark by the time she was well on her
way on the lonely road, but it was her own fault because she would hang 
about the village shops and talk.
The bus stop was just outside the bakery, so that was always her first 
visit. Mrs Fraser, the baker's wife, kept her two
butterfly cakes each day. They were a bit stale, yesterday's "unsolds", and 
often the cream tasted sour.
Kathy had so much to tell Mrs Fraser after a day at school. But Mrs Fraser 
was as fussy as a sparrow, with a small
nose as sharp as a beak. She kept rushing out to the bakehouse and back to 
the counter. She was always so busy
that she had no time for listening. To listen she would have had to stop, 
and Sadie Fraser never stood still and
listened. Her husband did that.
Before Kathy was even out of the door, Mrs Fraser was darting out to the 
bakehouse and was starting on Jock. "A bit
of cream might fatten up that little stick of a girl, Jock. Those parents 
of hers with their cranky foods and that wholemeal bread and their strange ideas and 
stuff . . . Are you listening, Jock?''
Jock Fraser, dusted with flour, would lean against the doorway. He would take the hem 
of his jam-splattered apron and wipe the 
flour off his droopy, grey moustache. Then
he would answer in his Scottish voice, "Och,  aye," as he did to 
everything Sadie said to him.
Kathy wandered across the road, eating the cakes quickly.
Then she slowly chewed their yellow paper cases up into little wet balls, which she 
spat out in the gutter in front of
the Post Office.
Now that she was ten, she was allowed to collect the
letters. She wore the key to the letterbox on a card inside her blouse. Her mother 
said that she day-dreamed so
much that she would have lost her head if it hadn't been fastened
 on. The door to the Post Office Box 48 was just the same as all the 
other doors, with their shiny keyholes and their
neat, white painted numbers.
Each little square cave was big enough only for letters and rolled 
newspapers, but not for parcels. If you had a parcel,
there was a pink card. You took the card into Joe Maloney inside the office, and he 
looked round in the hamper under the counter and gave you your 
parcel.
Joe Maloney was Irish, and was very tall and bent. He was bent even when he stood as 
straight as he 
could. He was
always very pleased when she had a pink card. The parcel was nearly always a book for 
her father, but 
once when it
was a package from Gran in England, Joe Maloney had helped her to open it, because it 
was hard to 
untie the string
that Gran had tied. Inside was a shoe box containing a bag of foreign coins that Kathy 
could not 
spend, and a book of
French nursery songs that Kathy could not read. Joe had tied up the parcel quickly and 
said, more to 
himself than
Kathy, "Should have been chocolates!"
When Joe told her he was "busy now," she knew he didn't want to hear any more about 
her new teacher's 
dog, or the
school fair, or anything else, so Kathy would go across the street where she would 
tell Mr and Mrs 
Turtle all the day's
news.
Mr Turtle's grocery shop was really the front part of their house, so Mrs Turtle was 
often behind the 
white scrubbed
counter with the twins, Billy and Bobby. They were as round and yellow as butterballs, 
and the fluff 
on their fair
heads was as soft as the down Kathy blew off the thistles to tell the time.
Mr Turtle was like a very large twin himself, but without the fluff. He was quite 
round. His smooth 
face and his bald
head were as shiny as a fresh-rubbed apple.
Kathy had never seen Mr Turtle in a hurry. He was always leaning on the counter, 
smiling at the 
customers. Each
time Kathy was talking to him, he would suddenly say, "Just a mo, Kathy - which hand 
will you have?"
Kathy would point at one of his arms, and, when he brought his hands from behind his 
back and opened 
his fingers,
she would find sweets in his soft palm.
Then he would say, "Better be on your way, Katie-girl - getting late."
Mrs Fraser said to Mrs Turtle, "That child talks too much," and she told Maloney he 
shouldn't let 
her hang about the
Post Office. "She gets too nosey. Tell her to be off!" But Joe Maloney pretended he 
didn't hear.
Mrs Turtle, who was kind, especially to Mr Turtle, just said, "She's lonely . . . " 
and Mr Turtle put his arm across
her shoulders and finished Minnie Turtle's sentence as he always did. . . "living away 
up there in 
the hills with no
other kiddies, and only the tussocks and the rabbits for company."
Tonight, as on most nights, Kathy's last visit was to Alf Grant, the blacksmith, who 
worked in a big 
corrugated-iron shed with a lean-to where the horses were tied to iron rings. The old 
man, pale as a grub, worked 
alone, tied up in his
dirty leather apron, which had many holes made by flying sparks.
It was so cold tonight that Kathy, who usually stood just inside the door, went over 
and stood beside 
the furnace. She
started to tell Alf that their Bessie had cut her leg on a
sharp stone, and that her father was thinking of getting the "vet", but Alf wasn't 
even listening. He was a racing man
himself, and he had no love for the farm horses.
"Why don't she go home?" he thought. Alf didn't like being watched while he was 
working, especially by Kathy's
black eyes. "Like a witch, she is, with that long white hair and them black eyes," he 
said under his breath.
He was putting the right, back shoe on the Milnes' Clydesdale mare, Nellie. She had 
been working since daylight,
and she was old and tired like Alf. She suddenly leaned against him, and nearly 
knocked him over. He fell back,
pulled himself up, and then lifted his sharp knee and struck the old mare in the side.
"0h!" cried Kathy, as if she had been stabbed.
"You'd better get out of here, Skinny," said Alf angrily. "It's getting dark." He 
turned his head away from her, and
pressed his hand down on the thick, wooden handle of the bellows. The whooshing 
bellows blew life into the grey
embers, and suddenly, with a roar, the embers burst into flames as red as hell-fire. 
Alf Grant's pointed ears glowed in
the red light. Kathy began to back quickly to the door. She had better get going.
The first part of the road after it passed the blacksmith's was friendly. There were 
farmhouses with lights in the
kitchens, and the lanterns in the milking sheds were lit. Cows waited in the yards, 
chewing their cud. The Milnes had just got the electric light in their cow-sheds, and, 
in the white glow, Kathy could see their three brown draught
horses grazing in the paddock by the house.
But once past the Milnes' house the road started to wander away by itself, as if it 
were tired of houses and people
and cows and horses. Now, the road curved beneath the cliff of the old gravel pit, and 
the dark began to creep round
Kathy.
Just as she was nearly past the gravel pit, stones began to fall down the cliff behind 
her. She tried to look back, but
she was afraid. It might be that nasty Thomson boy scrambling down the cliff after 
her, and she tried to run harder.
Her legs felt as stiff as sticks, and her throat was growing tight and sore. It would 
be downhill soon, and she could run
twice as fast down the steep hill, and once round past the other side of the dark 
cliff there would be light.
And there it was! The bright lantern! The shining light! Away across the 
valley, her father was standing with the
glowing kerosene lamp in his hand.
And now the road crept through the valley close to the deep creek, and the 
noise of the water which she had liked on
her way to school in the morning, had a queer, sad sound at night. But, as 
long as the bright lamp shone on the hill,
the sound of the sad water did not worry her too much.
Kathy needed that light so badly now, for this was the worst part of the 
road. She called this her Valley of the
Shadows, for she had to pass the white cemetery gates. They were always 
kept locked with a rusty iron padlock. On
one side of the gates was a holly tree where birds would sleep.
Sometimes, when Kathy was running past, the noise of her feet in the loose 
gravel would wake the birds, and they would flutter up into the night. Tonight she 
would pay those birds back - frightening her.
She picked up a stone from the and threw it into the holly. At once there 
was a sudden rush of wings, as the birds flew into the night.
Kathy started to run. But she did not have to run very fast, because her father was 
near. Nothing  could scare her now,
not even the nasty Thomson boy, nor Alf Grant, nor the sad sound of the water, nor the 
cemetery birds.
She ran slower and slower until she was walking. Now father was coming 
towards her through the night. He was close to
her; their hands joined. The long walk home
was over for ever - or was it just for tonight? Kathy did not care.
"Why do you have to come for me every night?" she said, crossly. "I'm big now!"
She took the schoolbag from her shoulder and gave her father a very gentle hit with 
it.
He took the schoolbag in his hand, and Kathy took the warm handle of the 
kerosene lamp, and together, in the pool
of light, they walked through the darkness.

The Queer Stranger
retold by Amabel Williams-Ellis
 illustrated by Conrad Frieboe

Once upon a time a good old man and his good old wife lived in a little white cottage 
not far from Snowdon. Every evening, 
before they sat down by the fire after supper, the old man would take the
bucket with all the greasy water, in which his wife had done the day's washing-up, and 
he would walk just ten steps from the 
door of the little white cottage to the garden wall. Then he would
empty the bucket over the wall, carefully swishing out all the greasy water and onion 
skins and potato peelings and carrot 
scrapings, and whatever else there might be.
Next morning the neighbour's pig would come rooting and snuffling for whatever hadn't 
soaked into the ground, and the old man 
liked to see that. Yes, indeed! He was a nice kind old man that one,
and his wife was very glad that he did this for her every evening while she tidied up 
the hearth and made the fire bright.
One evening, just when the moon was rising, the old man went out as usual. Ten steps 
he walked from the door of his little 
white cottage. He was just going to empty the bucket when he noticed
somebody standing by the wall beside him. It was a stranger - someone that he had 
never seen before. He was a funny little 
fellow, was this stranger. He was dressed in green with a red waistcoat,
and his clothes were made in a way the old man hadn't seen, no,
not for years. He had queer squinty eyes, and besides all that the old man noticed, 
that he had very big feet.
"Oh dear! Oh dear!" said the stranger, the squinty-eyed
fellow. "Indeed I do wish you wouldn't do that every evening!" And he pointed to the 
bucket.
The good old man was surprised. "Well, really now! I've done it every evening of my 
life!"
"Yes, indeed, I know you have!" said the squinty-eyed stranger, and he gave such a 
deep sigh that the good old
man felt quite sorry.
"But what harm can it do?" asked the old man.
"Harm enough!" said the squinty-eyed stranger.
"But the neighbour's pig, now! He likes it very much,  for he comes every morning 
snuffling for the potato peelings and the onion skins and the carrot scrapings, and 
whatever else there may be," said the old 
man.
"I know very well that he does," said the queer stranger and he sighed again, and then 
he added, "Do 
you think you
could stand on my feet?"
"Stand on your feet?" said the good old man. "What help would that be?"
"It would be a great help, because then I could show you what is the matter," said the 
stranger, and 
this time he
seemed more down-hearted than ever.
"Well, I could try," said the good old man, who was always one to be kind. So the 
stranger came and stood close beside the good old man, and dear me! what a good thing 
it was now that the squinty-eyed fellow had 
those big feet!
For they were big enough for the good old man to be able to stand on them - when he 
was holding on to 
the wall, you
understand.
As he held on to the wall, the good old man looked down to where he always emptied the 
bucket, and 
what do you
think? It seemed as if he could look right down into the ground, just as if it had 
been clear water, 
and there, just
below, what should he see but a cottage, a white cottage that was very much like his 
own? But, oh 
dear, what a
mess! The slates on the roof were all running with grease and pig-swill. There were 
potato peelings tangled round the chimney, and onion skins in the gutter, and whatever 
else there was.
"Well, dear me!" said the old man, as he looked. "Who would have thought it?"
"It comes right down my chimney," said the stranger, and he sounded very down-hearted, 
just as if he 
were going to
cry. "Right down my chimney it comes! Sometimes it splashes into the room, and even 
when it comes 
outside it splashes on the window panes. And my wife is so downhearted, she's ready to 
die, for how can she keep 
a clean
house with pig-swill running down it for thirty years?"
"Man dear, but it's terrible!" said the good old man, still looking down. "But I don't 
know how I 
can help it - not really. Every night I come out of my house and I walk ten steps from 
the door, and what would my poor wife say if I didn't
empty the bucket for her? Getting old she is!"
"Could you think of a way to stop it?" said the stranger, sighing.
"Yes, I could think, but truth to tell I don't know what to think," said the good old 
man at last; 
and with that he got off
the stranger's feet, and then he couldn't see anything any more - except what he'd 
always seen, and the queer stranger. Then the two of them sat down, and now the good 
old man felt 
very sad indeed, thinking of all the pigswill on
the nice tidy house.
"We haven't thought of anything," said the squinty-eyed fellow at last, 
"so I will come back in three days' time, and
perhaps by then you will have thought." And with that they both sighed 
and said good night.
When he got back to the cottage he found the good old woman wondering 
what had kept her husband outside in the
moonlight such a long time. So he told her all about it.
"Dear me!" said the good old woman, and now she too was ready to cry. 
"What a terrible thing indeed for the poor
woman to have all that pig-swill pouring over her roof and down her 
chimney every night!" And after that they went to
bed, both feeling very down-hearted.
Next morning when it was daylight they both leaned over the wall, but 
they couldn't see anything except the pig
snuffling about, very well pleased as usual, and the ground looked 
exactly as it had always looked. So they went
back to the little white cottage, and for three days they sat, and they 
talked and talked about what they could do, and
each evening the good old man emptied his pig bucket, but he sighed as he did it.
On the third night the old man went out as usual. It was dark, for the 
moon hadn't risen yet, but all the same it was
light enough for him to see that the queer stranger was there again, and 
so they greeted each other.
"My heart has been sore for you indeed with the pig-swill running down 
your chimney," said the good old man. "And
my wife has been fit to cry only with the telling of it."
"Have you thought of anything?" asked the stranger sadly.
"Well, indeed I have!" said the good old man.
"And does the good old woman agree with it?" asked the stranger.
"Yes indeed she does," said the good old man.
"And what is it?" asked the stranger.
"It's this," said the good old man. "To move the door of my house and make an 
opening on the other side, and to pay Mr Williams Joiner and Mr Bill Davies Mason to 
do a tidy job for me - for, indeed, I'm too old now to do it.  But I and my 
wife, we can't bear to think that you and your
good woman should live like that with the pig-swill and all over a nice 
tidy house for thirty years. No indeed! Really!"
And that is just what the good old man did, and that is why - to this 
day - that little white cottage has the door on the wrong side of it. He paid Mr 
Williams Joiner and Mr Bill Davies 
Mason, too, for the work they did - that good old
man. But do you know, all the same, it didn't cost him a penny? For 
what do you think? Every Saturday night, after it
was dark, the good old man or the good old woman would always find an 
old-fashioned silver penny pushed under
their new door.

Star Boy
A story about Sweden
by S. C. George  illustrated by Ebbe Fog

In the south of the province of Scania, where most of Sweden's grain is 
grown, the land is flat and fertile. But in the
north, where Sven Nilsson lived, the land is hilly and covered with pine forests.
The trees are so close to the little farms that they look as if they are going to 
attack them. That was what Sven
sometimes thought, anyway.
In the long summer days, it was not so bad, for it was light on his way 
to school. Even then, Sven walked quickly.
But, in winter, it was dark. His torch made long shadows creep over the 
white ground, and sometimes a branch,
heavy with snow, would break with a loud sound. Sven was often pale and 
trembling when he reached school.
The other boys teased him about his fear of the woods. Even Sven thought 
that he was a coward when he saw
children much younger and smaller than himself skiing happily through the trees.
When Sven was a small boy, a terrific storm had struck
the country. Trees had been blown over, farm buildings damaged, and a 
part of their roof had been torn off. The
howling of the wind, the breaking of branches and the crash of falling 
trees had frightened Sven so much that he had
been left with a fear of the forest at all times of the year.
Most Swedish farms are small. Mr Nilsson's  was only about thirty acres. 
Like many other small farmers, he also
owned some forest land, and Sven's path to school lay through it.
The "Star Boys" knew of Sven's fears, and so they did not ask him to join 
them when they visited the farms at
Christmas time. The Star Boys were given this name because they dressed 
up in long white gowns and tall pointed caps covered with paper stars. One boy carried 
a star at the end of a stick, and another a goat made of straw. They would sing songs, 
or act a short scene from the Bible, and then they would be invited into the farmhouse 
and given a hot drink and some gingerbread. Sven was sad because he knew why he had 
not been asked to join them.
Mr Nilsson's farmhouse was more than 200 years old. The farm buildings 
were built of wood and painted dark red. The
roofs were thatched. The walls of the house were made of pine logs. Stone 
steps to the door led - into a narrow
passage. On one side of it was a room where Great-grandmother Nilsson had 
done her weaving. The living-room, on
the right, had a long table used for parties. Along one wall was a bench on which 
stood a grandfather clock and a cabinet for Mr Nilsson's 
papers.
Two beds were along another wall, and they were hidden by curtains. In one corner was 
a very big 
earthenware stove
built on bricks. All these things were old when Grandfather Nilsson was young, and so 
were the tiles 
which covered
one wall.
In the farmyard were a well and a horse-mill which could be used to drive the 
machinery in the barn. 
Nowadays, the
house had a telephone, running water and electricity, though people always used 
candle-light at 
Christmas.
Sven enjoyed playing ice-hockey and bandy, which is a ball game played on ice. He also 
loved sailing 
and ski-joring, which is being towed on skis by a horse. In the summer he played 
football, and he swam in one 
of the nearby
lakes. But his fun was always spoilt by his fear of the forest through which he had to 
go to meet his 
friends.
But on Christmas Day he would stay at home, for friends were visiting them. The house 
would be filled 
with the lovely
smells of boiled and roast ham, spare ribs and pigs' trotters, which were the main 
Christmas dishes. 
There would also
be old-fashioned sausages and
jams.
On Christmas Eve they would eat bread dipped in the water in which the Christmas ham 
had been boiled. 
This was a
reminder of the olden days when food was scarce and nothing could be wasted.
Mr Nilsson would dress up as the Christmas gnome, for whom a bowl of porridge would be 
left in the 
stable. He would
first knock on the door, and then throw in the Christmas presents. In the middle of 
the room would 
stand the
decorated Christmas tree.
For many days, a hard frost had covered the small windows with frost flowers. 
Yesterday, Sven had 
pressed a warm
coin against the frosted glass, and, when he had taken it away, he had made himself a 
round 
peep-hole. Through it,
he had seen clods of hard-frozen earth, raindrops hanging from twigs like glass beads, 
branches 
frosted over and the
heads of cow-parsley changed into glittering ornaments. But today a snowstorm had 
covered up the 
land. The wind
had risen and a blizzard had built snowbanks against the buildings. It had howled over 
the roof, 
knocked down great
trees in the forest and blown over heavy carts as though they were toys. It was even 
worse than the 
storm which had
frightened Sven when he was a baby.
It was only two days to Christmas. Mr Nilsson had
taken the horse and cart into town to bring back Christmas
presents and extra food for the party. He had said that
on his way home through the forest he would find a
Christmas tree tall enough to touch the ceiling. He should
have returned before noon, but as the hands of the grandfather clock marked off the 
hours, and it grew dark, Mrs Nilsson grew more and more worried.
 "He'll be sitting before a warm stove in town, waiting
for the storm to end," Sven said, trying to comfort her.
 "He would have telephoned if he knew he would be
late," Mrs Nilsson said.
 "We know where he was shopping. I'll ring them up,"
said Sven.
 But the storm had torn down the wires and the line
was dead.
 Their hopes rose when Blackie, their dog, began to
whine and scratch at the bottom of the door.
 "There he is," Mrs Nilsson said, with a happy smile.
"Wrap up well and take a lantern. Your father may want
help with the parcels." Sven lit the storm-lantern and lifted the latch. The door flew 
open with such force that he was knocked off his feet. Snow was blown about the room. 
Though the farmyard was sheltered by the surrounding buildings, snow lay deep against 
the door. The horse was there, and the presents were in the cart, but the Christmas 
tree was missing, and so was Sven's father. 
Sven searched the farm buildings for him, but they were dark and silent. Blackie 
jumped into the back of the cart and began whining again. The horse was shivering and 
the reins were broken. The wind was not so strong now, though it still screamed over 
the farm buildings.
Sven knew that something was wrong, and, as he carried the parcels to the kitchen, he 
knew what he must do.
"The reins are broken and there's no Christmas tree," Sven said sadly.
"Then your father has had an accident." Mrs Nilsson pressed a hand to her breast and 
her face went pale.
The farm-workers had gone home before darkness fell.
 There was no one they could send to look for him, even if anyone had been willing to 
go into the forest in such a storm.
"I'll get my skis," Sven said.
"You can't go out in this," his mother cried.
"Besides …" she didn't finish what she was going to say.
"Say it. I'm scared all right," Sven said, "but Father needs help, and 
how else can he get it?" 
"But what can you do - even if you find him?"   
"I shall take Blackie and Blossom." Blossom was their horse. "Blossom 
knows the way blind-folded. I'll take a rope,
too. I might do some skijoring," he said, trying to speak bravely.
"Your father may need this," said his mother. She put a flask of spirit 
into his pocket.
Sven put on his skis and took the lantern. Blackie followed at his heels. 
He collected a rope from the barn, took
Blossom out of the cart and tied the rope to her.
The mare pulled him out of the yard, but then she refused to go further 
into the storm. So, Sven put the rope loosely
round her neck and led her forward by the bridle. He talked to her until 
she was no longer frightened. Blackie went
ahead of them. He sometimes sank in the snow, but he struggled out and 
found the more solid parts of the track,
which he knew as well as did Blossom.
They travelled very slowly, though they kept to the side of the hedges 
which was away from the wind. These hedges
marked the boundaries of the farm. At last the forest appeared before 
him, black and threatening. Sven tried not to
feel frightened as the trees closed around them.
The wind was not so strong there, but the danger was greater. From 
everywhere came the sound of breaking
branches. Giant trees groaned and roared as they fell, whole sections of the forest 
had been knocked down, and it
was so dark that Sven would have fallen into one of the many large holes left by the 
torn-up roots if he hadn't been
carrying the lantern.
To Sven's surprise, the storm passed on its way, and suddenly Blackie ran 
ahead and began to bark excitedly.
Sven led Blossom towards the din and heard a quiet groan. Tying the mare 
to a tree, he hurried forward with the
lantern held before him. He saw Blackie first, whining and scratching at 
a fallen tree. His father lay pinned by the legs
beneath it, almost buried by snow. He seemed to be unconscious. Sven took 
the top off his flask and forced a few
drops of spirit between his father's lips. Mr Nilsson's eyes opened, and, 
when he saw it was Sven, he tried to smile.
"My legs must be broken. They feel dead," he said weakly.
"No wonder, with this tree across them," Sven grunted. He tried to lift 
it high enough for his father to drag himself
clear, but it was too heavy.
"Get some help," Mr Nilsson groaned.
"There isn't anyone," said Sven.
"What? You came here alone?" Mr Nilsson asked. He was very surprised.
"No, with Blossom and Blackie, That gives me an idea," said Sven. "If I 
can raise this tree from your legs, can you
drag yourself clear?"
"You couldn't do it. Put Blossom's rug over me and leave me the flask. 
Then get help from town - if you can get through."
"We'll try first," said Sven.
He had noticed that the thick branch of another tree hung over his 
father. He threw the rope three times before he got
it over the branch. Then he tied one end round the fallen tree, close to 
his father, and the other end to Blossom. Then
he made her pull. But the tree was too heavy and the ground was too 
slippery for her. Blossom fell to her knees, and got up, trembling all over. Sven 
struck her, and 
this time Blossom moved forward, pulling as
hard as she could. Her hooves slipped again, yet the tree rose a few 
inches before Blossom slipped and the tree
crashed down. And Mr Nilsson had just enough time to drag himself clear. 
He lay for a time, panting. His legs were
so sore and stiff that he could not get up. But, somehow, with Sven's 
help, he got across Blossom's back.
"Don't forget the Christmas tree," he said, trying to smile. "I nearly 
lost my life cutting it. It's lucky for me that
Blossom bolted home."
They reached home, with the tree towed by Blossom at the end of the rope. 
Mr NiIsson's legs were found to be badly
bruised, but not broken. It would be a happy Christmas after all, and 
especially for Sven who knew that he had
conquered his fear of the forest.
"Now that Father is all right," he said, "may I ask Erik Kristensen to 
let me join his Star Boys?"
His parents looked at each other and smiled.

The Hat that Took a Journey
by Shirley H. Clark
illustrated by Graham Percy

Biddy Anne, fair, freckle-faced, and friendly, with legs thin from growing, hated her 
school hat. She had worn it twenty-two times, and each time she hated it more.
"Do I have to wear it?" she asked her mother.
"It's a very nice hat. No one else in your class has such a nice hat, Biddy Anne."
No one would want one, thought Biddy Anne bitterly.
It was a stiff, white panama hat with a wide brim. Around the hard crown 
was a wide, navy-blue ribbon. Neatly printed inside, under the lining, was Biddy 
Anne's name and address.
"It looks like a large dinner plate," she would say crossly.
For the twenty-third morning, her mother put the hat firmly on her round 
little head, fussed over her gym-dress, and
looked at her shoes for specks of dust.
"Now, do be careful crossing the street, and don't dawdle on the bridge." 
Her mother's last-minute warnings followed
her out the door of 33 Myrtle Street.
With dragging feet, she reached the corner. Quickly, she swept the hated 
hat off her head. Clutching it in one hand,
and holding her case in the other, she ran up the road. She had to push 
against the wind., which was twisting the tree-tops and whipping the chrysanthemum 
stalks in the gardens.
At the end of the road she had to pass Mr Piper's house. Biddy Anne liked 
Mr Piper. Once he had shown her how to
carve a basket from a peach stone. This morning, he was out in his 
garden, digging. He was rugged and strong as a
tree-trunk, and his face was round and rosy as one of his own apples.
"By jove, lass, you're getting like a young beanstalk. Put your hat on, 
and I'll give you an apple to eat. I saved one of
my specials just for you."
A smile lit up her face, as though someone had pulled a light switch. She 
forgot the hat for a moment.
Eating Mr Piper's orange pippin apple, Biddy skipped along to the bridge turn-off. It 
was a foot-bridge over the Waikato River, and running beside it was the railway line.
Biddy loved the dark-green river and the willows along the banks, 
trailing their green fingers in the water. Peering
down, she watched the apple core get swallowed up in a whirlpool. 
Sometimes she thought of herself falling down and
being sucked underneath, never to appear again. She shivered.
She saw an empty coal barge coming up the river. She knew it was going to 
Tuakau. Along at the station, the
Rotorua steam locomotive snorted and snuffed like a restless black 
dragon. Then, with clouds of steam, it moved
across the main street, and thundered on to the bridge.
The whistle blew, and suddenly the noise of the train was upon her. She saw hot red 
coals, and two 
shiny brown
faces with white eyes and teeth gleaming. One of them called out to her - then they 
were past. Biddy leaned over the bridge to watch the barge. The wind caught at her 
skirt, and she held on to her hat.
Everything happened at once.
Later, Biddy Anne wasn't sure whether it was the rushing of the train, the tugging of 
the March wind, 
or her own
careless fingers. But, somehow, the hat fell from her fingers, and, drifting this way 
and that, 
landed at last on the
deck of the coal barge.
Biddy Anne gave a cry. She was pleased and worried at the same time. Then, just before 
the barge 
disappeared
under the bridge, a man with ginger whiskers, grabbed her hat and waved it at her. He 
yelled 
something she couldn't
hear.
The hat had gone on a journey up the river.
On the way to school, she was busy thinking of the adventures the hat might be having. 
It was not 
until lunch-time,
while she was eating her favourite marmite and celery sandwiches, that Biddy thought 
of what Mother 
was going to
say. The answer was on the tip of her tongue. The wind blew it off. Of course it did!
Mother was putting hot biscuits on to the cooling rack when Biddy Anne came quietly 
through the door.
"Wait a minute, Biddy Anne. Where is your school hat?"
Mother was angry when she heard Biddy Anne's story. "Oh, no! You always looked so nice 
in that hat, 
and it cost a
lot of money. Goodness knows what your father is going to say!" She poured some hot 
milk into a 
glass, and put it
down in front of Biddy Anne. "Oh well, drink up your milk, child."
For seven days, Biddy Anne had no hat to wear to school. Then, one day, she came home 
to find Mother 
looking very
happy.
She placed a big box in front of Biddy Anne, and told her to open it. "A surprise for 
you."
Inside was Biddy Anne's school hat!
"But how did it get here?"
Mother explained that the barge man had found Biddy Anne's name and address inside the 
lining, and 
very kindly
sent it back.
The twenty-fourth time that Biddy Anne went to school in her hat, she felt quite 
different.
She felt she had quite the most exciting hat in the school. Hadn't her hat been on a 
journey up the river? As she walked along, she had a wonderful time dreaming of all 
the things her hat had seen.

The Old Woman and the Tramp
A Swedish Folk Tale
illustrated by Olga Volger

There was once a tramp who went plodding his way through a forest, seeking shelter for 
the night. He came to a cottage, where smoke curled up from the chimney. How good it 
would be to roast oneself before a fire, he thought, and to get a bite of something. 
So he knocked at the door.
An old woman opened it. "Good evening, and well met!" said the tramp.
"Good evening," said the old woman. "Where do you come from?"
"South of the sun, and east of the moon," said the tramp; "and now I am on my way home 
again, for I 
have been all
over the world, except for this forest."
"You must be a great traveller then," said the old woman. "What do you want here?"
"Shelter for the night," he said.
"Then you may as well go away at once, for my house is not an inn."
"My good woman," said the tramp, "you must not be so hard-hearted, for we are both 
human beings, and 
should help
one another."
"Help one another?" exclaimed the old woman. "Who'll help me, do you think? I have no 
food in the 
house! Be off!"
But the tramp was not so easily driven away, and, although the old woman grumbled, he 
went on begging like a starved dog, until at last she gave in and said that he could 
lie on the floor for the night.
"Well, better on the floor without sleep, than suffer cold in the forest deep!" said 
the tramp, who 
was a merry fellow
and always ready with a rhyme.
When he came into the room, he saw that the old woman was not as poor as she had 
pretended; but she 
was
greedy. He asked for something to eat. "Where am I to get it?" asked the old woman. "I 
haven't had a 
bite to eat the whole day."
The tramp was a cunning fellow. "Poor Granny, you must be starving," he said. "Well, I 
suppose I 
shall have to ask
you to have something with me then."
"What have you to offer, I should like to know?"
"He who far and wide does roam sees many things not known at home; and he who many 
things has seen 
has wits
about him and senses keen," said the tramp. "Lend me a pot, Granny."
The old woman was curious, and lent him a pot. He filled it with water and put it on 
the fire. Then 
he took a four-inch
nail from his pocket, turned it three times in his hand and put it into the pot.
The old woman stared with all her might. "What's this going to be?" she asked.
"Nail-broth," said the tramp, and began to stir the water with the porridge-stick.
"Nail-broth!" exclaimed the old woman. "That's something for poor people to know, and 
I should like 
to learn how to
make it."
"Then just watch me," said the tramp, and went on stirring. The old woman sat down on 
the ground and 
her eyes
followed his hand as he stirred the broth.
"This usually makes good broth," he said, "but this time it may be rather thin, for I 
have been making broth the whole week with the same nail. If only I had a little 
sifted oatmeal to put in, that would make it better. But, what one has to go without, 
it's no use thinking 
more about," and so he stirred the broth again.
"Well, I think I have a scrap of flour somewhere," said the old woman, and went to 
fetch it, and it 
was both good and
fine.
The tramp began putting the flour into the broth and went on stirring, while the old 
woman stared now 
at him, and now
at the pot. "This broth should be good enough for company," he said, putting in one 
handful of flour 
after another. "If I
had only a bit of salted beef and a few potatoes to put in, it would be fit for 
gentlefolks. But, 
what one has to go
without, it's no use thinking more about."
When the old woman really began to think it over, she thought she had some potatoes, 
and perhaps a 
bit of beef as
well; and these she gave to the tramp, who went on stirring, while she sat and stared 
as hard as 
ever. "This soup
would be grand for the best in the land," he said.
"It's wonderful," said the old woman, "and all made with a nail!"
"Ah, but if I had only a little barley, and a drop of milk, we could ask 
the king himself to have some of it. This is what
he has for supper every blessed evening. I know, for I have been in service 
under the king's cook. But there, what
one has to go without, it's no use thinking more about."
The old woman remembered she had a little barley, and as for milk, well, 
she wasn't quite out of that. So she went to
fetch milk and barley.
The tramp stirred a while longer, and then he took out the nail. "Now it's 
ready," he said. "With this soup the king and
queen always take a sandwich or two, and have a cloth on the table when 
they eat. But still what one has to go
without, it's no use thinking more about."
By this time the old woman had begun to think that it would be fine to have 
supper just as the king had it. She went
to the cupboard and brought out a white cloth, a wine bottle and glasses, 
bread, butter and cheese, smoked beef and
veal until at last the two sat down to a table fit for a king indeed.
Never in her life had the old woman had such a grand feast, and never had 
she tasted such broth; and, just fancy,
made only with a nail! She could not do enough for the tramp who had taught 
her such a useful thing.
So they ate and drank until they were sleepy. The tramp was now going to 
lie down on the floor, but the old woman
said, "Such a grand person must have a bed to lie in."
The tramp did not need much persuading. "Happy are they who meet with such 
good people," he said, and he lay
down on the bed and went to sleep.
Before he left in the morning, the old woman gave him coffee and bread. "Thank you," 
she said, "for what you have
taught me. Now I shall live in comfort, since I have learned how to make broth with a 
nail."
"Well, it isn't very difficult if one only has something good to add to it," said the 
tramp as he went on his way.

Honk the Moose
by Phil Stong	illustrated by Kurt Wiese

Ivar and his friend, Waino, lived in a little town called Birora in Minnesota, U.S.A., 
where the snow lies deep all
through the winter. Their families had come there from Finland, but the boys had both 
been born in Minnesota, and so
they were American boys.
Ivar's father kept the livery stable in Birora. He kept the horses and donkeys from 
the iron mines, and the horses from
the lumber camp nearby. He was a vet, too, and took care of the animals when they were 
sick.
Waino and Ivar had been hunting all day, but they had not found any deer - not even a 
bear. Ivar was pretty certain that he had shot a rabbit with his air gun, but the 
rabbit was pretty sure he hadn't. Now they were sitting by the stove in the little 
office off the livery stable, oiling their skis.
"If we had shot a deer," Ivar said, "I guess he would have been pretty hard to get 
home."
Waino nodded. "Couldn't have done it. Anyway, deer are pretty nice - they don't hurt 
anybody. I wish we had shot a good old moose."
Ivar picked up the air gun which was lying beside him. "If we had seen a moose," he 
said, "this is what I'd have done to him." He fired three shots as fast as he could 
pull the lever, 
out the door of the office, and down the dark
corridor between the stalls where the horses were feeding.
There was a sad sound at once. It went "HAAWWNNK-HAWNK-HAWNK-HHAAWWNNKK!"
"Golly gee! What do you think that is, Ivar?" gasped Waino.
Ivar picked up the air gun which he had dropped. "It sounded-it sounded 
like a car."
"Cars don't care if you shoot them."
"Might have hit the horn."
"It honked a long time."
"Well," said Ivar bravely, "I'll find out what it is." He went to the 
light switch that lit up the stable.
"Maybe it was a moose," said Waino softly. He stood behind Ivar and 
looked over his shoulder.
Ivar pressed the switch.
It was a moose.
It was a sad moose. It was, very likely, the saddest moose there had ever been. It was 
the coldest winter Minnesota had had for many years, and the moss and grass that a 
moose likes to eat were buried under seven feet of frozen snow. The moose was sad, 
because he was very hungry. He had been looking for breakfast for three days and he 
had wandered into the town on the stable side. His nose had told him at once that 
there were all the breakfasts he had been missing for days, and so it was a moose.
Ivar shut the door of the office quickly. "Nothing," he said. "Just a 
moose." He thoughtfully slipped the bolt on the door.
Waino's eyes grew round, and his knees shook a little. "Oh!" he said 
faintly. "Just a moose?"
They stood there for a while, thinking. "I suppose I'd better go out and shoot him 
soon," Ivar said.
"That moose isn't hurting us," said Waino. "He isn't even making any 
noise. Besides, I think I'd better go home - Mother probably wants me to do 
something."
"Oh," said Ivar brightly, "that's fine then. You can shoot him as you go out. I had 
better stay here in case the telephone rings."
"I guess I can stay a little while," Waino said.
They sat there for a long time and said nothing and then they both jumped almost out 
of their skins. Something was rattling the door.
Ivar picked up a pitchfork. "You get away from here," he shouted. "Go back in the 
woods where you belong."
There was a pause. "What's the matter in there?" asked a voice. "Why is the door 
locked?"
"Papa!" Ivar shouted, and threw back the bolt.
"What's the matter?" asked Ivar's father again.
"A moose," Ivar said.
"A moose," Waino added.
"What?" Ivar's father, who was a very big man, laughed, and the floor shook a little. 
"You've seen a moose, eh? Well, he wouldn't chase you here."
"Out in the stable," Ivar told him.
Ivar's father laughed again. "Moose in the stable! I think you've got a bat in the 
belfry, Ivar. I guess a horse got loose."
"It's a moose, Papa - honestly!"
"You should see things straight, Ivar." his father said.
"It is a horse, and, because you were afraid, you say it was a moose. 
Come, we'll see this moose now." He opened
the door and stepped out into the aisle. "We will see."
An instant afterward, he almost threw the two boys back into the office. 
He followed them and locked the door. "It's a moose," he said.
"I said it was," said lvar.
Ivar's father thought for a moment, and then he said, "You lock the door after me and 
stay here. We'll see about this.
If I call, you go out the window and run for a policeman."
He opened the door and went out, but Ivar disobeyed. He was not going to let his 
father talk to a moose unless he was there to help. He walked quietly behind his 
father, so of course Waino went too.
The moose had eaten so much hay that he was growing sleepy. Only, since the 
hay was there, he went on nibbling
"Wonderful," said Ivar's father. "How could anything eat so much? You 
please shoo now," he added to the moose.
"What are you going to do with him, Mr Ketonen?" Waino asked.
"What does one do with a moose?" Ivar's father said, a little crossly. "I am going to 
do what one always does with mooses."
"What's that?" Ivar asked curiously.
"I am going to shoot him out of my stable."
At this moment the moose's legs collapsed. He felt very good, but tired. 
He rolled one eye at the people and then he
sank on his side, and, with a contented sigh, went to sleep.
This made Ivar's father angry. "You get out of here. You can't sleep 
here." He prodded the moose in the side.
Ivar began to feel a little sorry for the moose, and Ivar's father said 
unhappily, "I wish I was mean enough to stick him
with a pitchfork. Listen, you," he said fiercely to the moose, "if you 
don't go away I'll get the policeman, and he'll
shoot you!"
The moose did not even open his eyes. He said, "HAAWNK" very softly and 
sleepily.
"All right," said Mr Ketonen firmly. "Ivar, you go for the policeman."
"Aw, Papa-!"
"Can I run a stable with a moose in it?" demanded his father. "He'll eat me out of 
house and home. Besides, mooses are dangerous."
"This one isn't, Papa. Look at him."
"How do we know what he'll be like when he wakes up? Go and get the 
policeman."
Ivar and Waino went. They found Mr Ryan, the policeman, in his office.
"Papa wants you to come and put a moose out of his stable," said Ivar.
Mr Ryan liked to joke. He stared at them for a moment, and then frowned. 
"Playing jokes on an officer of the law, eh?
Well, I'll take you back to the jail and let you choose your rooms right 
now. But, remember, we have bread and water for supper."
"No, Mr Ryan, please, it isn't a joke-" Waino said.
Mr Ryan reached for his belt with the two revolvers in it. For a moment he thought the 
boys were trying to make him believe a real moose was in the stable, and then he 
remembered that 
"moose" was Minnesota slang for a big man.
If there was a tramp in Mr Ketonen's stable, and Mr Ketonen had asked for 
help, then he might need it badly. Mr
Ryan started out at a swift walk that made the boys run.
"He's a kind of sad moose, Mr Ryan," panted Waino as they ran.
Mr Ryan, who really hated to arrest people, sighed. "The poor fellow was hungry and 
saw the door open, I suppose.
We'll see what we can do."
They had come to the door of the stable now, and Mr Ryan hooked his thumb 
over his belt close to one of the
revolvers. This tramp might be dangerous. "Everything all right?" he 
called.
"Everything is not all right!" shouted Ivar's father. "What are you 
going to do about this moose?"
Mr Ryan walked quickly and boldly down the aisle. The boys heard him 
gasp. "It's a moose!"
"I said it was a moose," Ivar told him. He added rather anxiously, "What 
are you going to do with him, Mr Ryan?"
Mr Ryan prodded the moose with the toe of his shoe, but the moose was too 
sound asleep even to honk. "How did he
get in here?" Mr Ryan asked.
"He was just here," said Ivar's father. "Why did you let him in?"
"I didn't let him in. I don't go round looking for meese - mooses," Mr 
Ryan answered. "I'm not supposed to look for
them."
"He is a hay-stealer," said Mr Ketonen. "Are you a policeman or not? Do 
you look out for thieves?"
"I didn't know he was going to steal your hay, even if I'd seen him. And 
I can't arrest everyone I see just because he
might steal something. Can I?" Mr Ryan asked the boys.
"No, sir," they said, together.
Ivar's father and the policeman laughed, but Ivar's father was worried. 
"Something must be done with him," he said.
"I guess the only thing to do is to shoot him, said Mr Ryan. "I don't like to do it 
though."
Ivar thought this was a very bad idea, and so did Waino. "You can't shoot a poor moose 
when he's asleep. Anyway, see - he looks as if he is going to cry."
"He does look kind of sad," said Mr Ryan.
"But what's going to happen when he wakes up?" asked Ivar's father.
Mr Ryan smiled. "I'll leave you my revolver," he said. "If he's 
dangerous when he wakes, you can shoot him."
Ivar's father jumped quickly away from the revolver.
"Me? I didn't say anything about shooting him. I asked you to please come 
here and take a moose out of my stable.
Are you the policeman here, or what are you?"
"I'm only a policeman for men, not for meese - I mean mooses. I tell you 
what we'd better do. We'd better call the
Mayor."
Mr Olavsson, the Mayor of Birora, had just finished his supper when the 
telephone rang. He came back from the
phone already pulling on his raincoat and fur cap. "Mister Ryan has gone crazy," he 
said to his wife, "and I must
go down and see what I can do. I don't know when I'll be back." And he 
hurried down the street as fast as a fat man
could.
"Hello there?" he called cautiously at the door of the livery stable.
He heard Mr Ryan answer in the same tone of voice that he always used: 
"Hello, Olavsson. Come in."
The Mayor walked in slowly. "Now, Frank," he said to Mr Ryan, "you let 
the moose go, and come with me to the
doctor-"
"Let the moose go!" Mr Ryan said. "I'm not holding the moose. I wish he 
would go. You come and let him go."
He sounded so angry that Mr Olavsson was sure that he wasn't crazy. He went further 
into the stable. "Where's this moose 
you're talking about? Did you say a moose or
mouse?"
"Mouse," said Mr Ryan grimly as the Mayor drew nearer.
Mr Olavsson saw Honk. "My goodness! That's not a mouse - that's a moose!"
"Oh, you don't mean it!" Mr Ryan said.
"But what's he doing here?"
Mr Ryan looked carefully at Honk. "Maybe he's learning to play the piano, 
or maybe he's knitting, but it looks to me
as if he was just sleeping."
Ivar laughed, and the Mayor frowned at him. "I mean - how did he get here?"
"Just wandered in," Ivar's father said.
"What are you going to do with him?"
Ivar's father shrugged his shoulders. "It's not my moose. This is the 
town moose. If it isn't, why is it in the town? If it
is, why do you send it in to eat almost more than a ton of hay?"
"He looks kind of skinny," said Mr Olavsson. "Poor old moose, it's been a hard 
winter."
"He was hungry," Ivar said.
"I can see that," the Mayor said. "Why didn't you shoot him?"
"You can't shoot a moose when he's asleep," Mr Ryan objected.
"No, you can't shoot him," said Ivar and Waino together. They were still sitting on 
the moose, and now they bounced up and down so hard that the moose said, "HAAWNK".
Mr Ryan and Mr Olavsson jumped back into the   office at once, but Ivar's father 
stayed and said, "Boys, you'd better go on home while we figure this out."
"But they can't shoot poor old Honk," Ivar said, and, though this was the 
moose's name, it was the first time anyone
had mentioned it.
"No, they can't shoot poor old Honk," said Waino.
"We'll do what we think is best," said Mr Olavsson crossly from the office 
door.
"You aren't going to have him shot?" Mr Ryan asked.
"No - we'll dispose of him.."
When Ivar and Waino heard this, they bounced up and down on Honk as hard as 
they could. They hoped he would
wake up and go away before he was disposed of. But Honk only said, 
"HAAWWNNK!" very slowly and without opening his eyes.
Ivar's father took a firm stand. "Me - I can't afford to feed a moose, and 
I don't want him here. But I'd sooner see him
here than disposed of. If this town won't take care of its mooses, I guess 
I'll have to."
The Mayor looked worried. "I'll call the City Council," he said.
An hour later they were all sitting around a table in Ivar's father's 
office looking very puzzled. "You can't shoot him - a
sad moose like that," Mr Olavsson was saying for the hundredth time.
"No – the poor fellow, he's starving," Mr Ryan said.
"You mean he was starving," Ivar's father corrected, thinking of his hay.
"I'll tell you," Mayor Olavsson said finally. "The town will pay for the hay, and Mr 
Ryan can stay here tonight with his revolver. If the moose makes any fuss, then he 
must shoot him. But if he just goes away, everything will be all right."
They agreed on that. Some time inn the night Honk went quietly away …

Cub Reporter
A story set in Sweden
by S. C. George
  illustrated by Ebbe Fog

Lars Martinson wanted to be a reporter after leaving school. Until then, he had to be 
content as assistant editor of his school magazine.
 People fascinated him. When he walked among the crowds in the Tivoli Amusement Park 
and the narrow shopping streets of Old Town, this is what he used to think: "Each 
person here is different from all the rest
and the   story of his life is also different. If I lived to be
a thousand and wrote a story about someone every day,
I should have told only one-third of the stories of this one
city. I should never run out of ideas."
Lars had made up his mind to be a reporter. He had been born in Stockholm, the capital 
of Sweden. The 
city stands
on thirteen islands, where Lake Malaren enters the Baltic Sea. Lars thought it was 
perfect.
Canals and lakes form a waterway across the whole breadth of Sweden, linking Stockholm 
with 
Gothenburg. Cargo
ships and passenger ships arrive from different lands and small steamers and water-
buses pass busily 
to and fro.
Young people from overseas stayed in the old square-rigged sailing-ship, the Af 
Chapman, which was now a youth hostel tied against the sea-wall the bridge from Old 
Town.
Among Old Town's medieval buildings, tiny courtyards and curving lanes, Lars always 
hoped to find a story which he could sell to the Evening News, his favourite 
newspaper.

Old Town on its two islands, as seen from the Town Hall tower.

Though he wrote regularly for his school magazine, he had not yet had a story accepted 
by the Evening 
News. If he
reported a fire, or an accident, a real reporter had always been there before him and 
had obtained 
far more news than
he was able to. All the same, it was good practice.
Lars had heard the real reporters say the magic word "Press" and show their press 
cards, as they 
walked into places
that ordinary people could not enter. On a plain card, Lars carefully printed his name 
and that of 
his school magazine,
but it never worked, even when he muttered "Press" in a deep voice.
He tried so hard and so often that one or two reporters began to recognise him and 
give him a friendly nod. Lars then felt that he was almost a reporter.
He had had so many of his stories returned that the kindly editor sometimes scribbled 
a note of 
encouragement on
the rejection slip. He guessed that Lars was very young. Lars treasured these and re-
read them 
whenever he felt that
he would never be good enough to be a reporter.
Saturday was Lars' favourite day for roaming the city, looking for stories. On this 
particular 
Saturday, the streets down
town were gay with pots of flowers. Crowds wandered along the tree-lined streets. The 
park benches 
were full and
tourists jostled one another in the shopping streets and queued at the hot-dog stalls 
in the pleasant 
little squares.
Water-buses in the canals were packed. Sunshine, sparkling on the water, made the 
white sails of 
racing-boats whiter and the bright shades over market-stalls even brighter.
Lars wanted to write a story, but he could think of nothing to write about. His mind 
was a blank. He 
tried to imagine
exciting things that might happen, and he even followed people who, he thought, might 
cause them, but 
they did
nothing interesting. No ambulance sounded its siren for a clear road. There was no 
fire-engine or troubles of any kind - not even a dog-fight. Everyone seemed cheerfully 
busy doing nothing unusual.
Lars admired the bronze statue of the Sun Singer near the House of Parliament and then 
walked across 
to watch
fishermen raising and lowering hoop-nets from cranes at the back of their row-boats. 
He found no 
story there; so he
made his way to the cobbled squares, gabled houses and ancient shops in the winding 
streets of Old 
Town. There,
he followed a shabby, unshaven man who wore a pink shirt, blue trousers and sandals.

Royal Palace, Stockholm. In the foreground are fishing boats, with hoop-nets hanging 
from cranes.

Lars had an idea that he might find a story in the way such a person passed his time.
Outside a restaurant in one of the squares, people were enjoying cool drinks under 
striped umbrellas. 
One of them, a
middle-aged man with greying hair, paid the waiter, then slipped his wallet into the 
inside pocket of 
his jacket which
hung over the back of his chair.
The man that Lars had followed bumped against the chair. As he mumbled, "Sorry," he 
quickly took the wallet and put it in his own pocket. But he was unlucky, for he had 
been seen both by Lars and by a waiter, who 
shouted a warning as the thief fled.
There was no policeman in sight, so Lars set off after the thief. He 
thought only of catching him. Behind Lars came
the man who had lost his wallet and one or two bystanders, who joined the 
chase.
"Stop thief!" they cried.
Lars heard the cries behind him, but he did not imagine that they meant him 
until someone stood in his way and
tackled him. Lars tore himself free. If he stopped to explain, the thief 
would escape. So, he raced on.
Twisting and turning from one street to another, the thief shook off all 
his pursuers except Lars. The thief had kicked
off his sandals and was now barefoot. Lars lost him in a crowded shopping 
street. It was such a narrow street that
cars and vans could not enter it. And still Lars had not seen a policeman.
They're never where they're wanted, he thought. Then he saw the pink shirt 
again. The thief was walking along, trying
not to be noticed.
Lars thought of shouting "Stop Thief!" but decided not to. The man would be 
gone before he could point him out.
The thief thought he was safe now, so, after looking back, he slowed down.
Lars gradually caught up with him. Oh, for a policeman! Lars would have 
known what to do then. He did not want to
give up the chase, because he would lose his story - and the story was really more 
important to him than catching a thief. So, he went on, following the man down another 
crowded lane. It was little more than a yard wide and half of it
was occupied by a stairway.
The man no longer bothered to look round. He walked along down a winding 
street of gabled houses and old-fashioned shops until he reached a square surrounded 
by fine old houses. He crossed the square and entered another narrow street. At the 
end of it, to the surprise of Lars,
he went into the Church of St Nicholas, not far from the Royal Palace.
Why would a thief go into a thirteenth century church? thought Lars, as he followed 
him at a safe distance. It was cool and restful inside, after the glaring sunshine. 
They had walked a long way, and they were glad to rest. The thief sank down in a pew 
behind a huge column where he was almost hidden.
As Lars crept close behind him, he couldn't help noticing the ancient 
sculpture of St George and the Dragon. Then he saw that the man had taken the wallet 
from his hip pocket and was looking into it. Lars moved closer, but the man heard him 
and looked swiftly round and stood up.
"You've been following me," he said angrily. "What do you want?"
Lars looked round for help. There were a dozen people in the church. Some were 
foreigners who knew no Swedish, while the rest did not want to get mixed up with 
trouble. They all stared, but no one helped, even when the man aimed a blow at Lars.
Lars turned and ran from the church. Suddenly he stopped and asked himself, "Why am I 
running? This is what he wants me to do."
So, he turned round and again followed the thief. He was walking quickly down a 
sloping drive past the palace to the quay opposite the sea-wall, where the Af Chapman 
lay.
A long line of cars was picking up people who had been visiting the palace, and a 
large force of police controlled the traffic. Lars thought of reporting the thief to 
them, but he thought that they would be too busy to be bothered with him.
The thief had not had a chance to examine the wallet properly. He meant 
to throw it into the sea after taking out the
money, but he decided to wait until a group of students from the Af 
Chapman had passed him. Then he leaned over
the rails, pretending to be interested only in the shipping.
Lars saw the top of the wallet sticking out of the man's hip-pocket. He 
grabbed it and ran back towards the palace,
hoping that the man would chase him in the direction of the police.
His plan partly succeeded, for the angry thief ran after him. But so did 
the students who had seen Lars snatch the
wallet. Lars was now in real trouble, for, if he was arrested with the 
wallet, who would believe the truth?
He was so scared that he was able to run faster than his pursuers. But he had walked a 
long way that day and was beginning to get tired as he approached the palace again. 
And there, 
among those awaiting cars, stood the same
grey-haired man - or so he thought - who was the owner of the wallet.
A surprised policeman saw Lars push the wallet into the man's hands - and then the 
pursuers threw themselves on the grey-haired man. They were sure that he was an 
accomplice of Lars. Lars 
did not wait to see what happened. He ran
away as fast as he could to the nearest tram-stop and there he caught a 
tramcar home.
As he did not know what had happened to the thief, he had only part of 
the story. However, he decided to describe all that had happened to him.

OPPOSITE. One of the narrow lanes in Old Town. In the background rises 
the tower of St Nicholas' Church.

When he had finished, he took his story to the newspaper office and left it there.
He had scarcely reached home again when the telephone rang.
"The editor of the Evening News would like to speak to Mr Lars Martinson about his 
article. When could he please call?"
"I'm on my way now," Lars answered. He was so happy that he danced for joy.
He arrived breathless at the newspaper office. A messenger took him into the editor's 
office and, 
behind a large desk,
sat the man into whose hands he had thrust the wallet.
"So you do recognise me," the editor said without a smile.
"Yes, sir, but I didn't know when I saw you before that . . ."
"That you would get me arrested?"
"Arrested!" Lars was amazed. This was not what he had expected.
"If you want to become a reporter, young man, never send in stories before you have 
finished them. 
The wallet was
not mine. That shaggy young man from whom you took it complained to the police. I 
cleared myself 
without much
trouble, but not before those students handled me roughly. The wallet contained the 
address of the 
real owner, and
the thief is now in prison. You needed this information to finish your story. I 
finished it for you 
by adding a paragraph."
The editor smiled at Lars. "Cheer up," he said. "I liked your story, as far as it 
went."
"It's accepted?" Lars gasped.
"Your cheque will be posted in the usual way."
"It's the first story I've ever sold, sir," Lars said. He felt happy and very proud.
"You still have everything to learn about reporting," said the editor. And take a word 
of advice: 
study comes first. Keep
writing as a hobby - at least until you have finished your studies. Then you can come 
and see me again."
"I will, sir," Lars said, earnestly.
"Then never send me another story without an end. Good luck, Lars," the editor said.
As Lars went out the door, with a huge grin on his face, the editor looked at him and 
sighed. He remembered how excited he himself had been when his first story was 
accepted by a newspaper. It was a thrill that 
came only once in a lifetime to a newspaper reporter.

Modern Stockholm, as seen from the southern part of the town, which is situated on 
rather high cliffs.
ABOVE. A typical street in a modern Stockholm suburb.
OPPOSITE. Winter scene in Stockholm, looking across roof-tops of part of Old Town 
towards the southern part of the city.
BELOW. View of ice-bound Lake Malaren, with the Town Hall tower and part of Old Town 
in the background.

The Riddlemaster
by Catherine Storr
illustrated by Richard Kennedy

Sitting on one of the public benches in High Street one warm Saturday 
morning, Polly licked all round the top of an
ice-cream cone.
A heavy body sat down suddenly beside her. Polly looked round.
"Good morning, Wolf!" she said.
"Good morning, Polly."
"Nice day, Wolf."
"Going to be hot, Polly."
"Mmmm," Polly said. She was trying to catch a bit of ice-cream with her 
tongue before it dripped on to the footpath.
"It's hot now, Polly!"
"I'm not too hot," Polly said.
"Perhaps that ice-cream is cooling you down," the wolf said, licking his lips.
"Perhaps it is," Polly said.
"I'm boiling!" the wolf said.
Polly put her hands in the pocket of her cotton dress and pulled out a 
threepenny bit.
"Here you are, Wolf," she said, holding it out to him. "Go and buy an 
ice-cream for yourself."
In a flash, the wolf had gone.
Two minutes later he came back, much more slowly, and sat down again beside 
Polly. He was licking his ice-cream
with a very long red tongue.
"Mm! just what I needed. Thank you very much, Polly."
"That's all right, Wolf," said Polly.
She went on licking her ice-cream happily, while the wolf did the same, but 
twice as fast.
At last, the Wolf said, "Haven't you nearly finished?" "Well no, not 
nearly," Polly said. She always enjoyed making
her ice-creams last as long as possible. "Have you?"
"Ages ago."
"I wish you wouldn't look at me so hard, Wolf," Polly said. "I don't like it."
"I was only thinking," the wolf said.
"You look sad, when you think," Polly said.
"It's a very sad world, Polly."
"Is it?" said Polly, in surprise.
"Yes. A lot of sad things happen."
"What things?" asked Polly.
"Well, I've finished up all my ice-cream."
"That's fairly sad, but anyway you did have it," Polly said.
"I haven't got it now," the wolf said. "And it's now I want it. Now is the 
only time to eat ice-cream. I wish it was
always now."
"It sounds like a riddle," Polly said.
"What does?"
"What you were saying. When is now not now, or something like that. You 
know the sort I mean, when is a door not
a door?"
"I love riddles," said the wolf in a much more cheerful voice. "I know 
lots. Let's ask each other riddles."
"Yes, let's," said Polly.
"And I tell you what would make it really good fun. Let's say that whoever 
wins can eat the other person up."
"Wins how?" Polly asked.
"By asking three riddles the other person can't answer." "Three in a row," Polly said.
"All right. Three in a row."
"And I can stop whenever I want to."
"All right," the wolf agreed, although he didn't want to. "And I'll start," he added 
quickly. "What made the penny stamp?"
Polly knew it was because the threepenny bit, and said so. Then she asked 
the wolf what made the apple turnover,
and he knew the answer to that. Polly knew what was the longest word in the 
dictionary, and the wolf knew what has
an eye but cannot see. He then asked what has hands but no fingers and a 
face but no nose, and Polly was able to
say that it was a clock.
"My turn," she said. "Wolf, what gets bigger, the more you take away from 
it?"
The Wolf looked puzzled.
"Are you sure you've got it right, Polly?" he asked at last. "You don't 
mean it gets smaller the more you take away
from it?"
"No, I don't."
"It gets bigger?"
"Yes."
"No cake I ever saw did that," the wolf said, thinking aloud. "Some special 
kind of pudding, perhaps?"
"It's not a pudding," Polly said.
"I know!" the wolf cried out. "It's the sort of pain you get when you're 
hungry. And the more you don't eat the worse
the pain gets. That's getting bigger the less you do about it."
"No, you're wrong," Polly said. "It isn't a pain or anything to eat, 
either. It's a hole. The more you take away, the
bigger it gets, don't you see, Wolf?"
"Being hungry is a sort of hole in your inside," the wolf said. "But anyhow 
it's my turn now. I'm going to ask you a new
riddle, so you won't know the answer already. What gets filled up three or four times 
a day, and yet can always hold more?"
"Do you mean it can hold more after it's been filled?" Polly asked.
The wolf thought, and then said, "Yes."
"But it couldn't, Wolf! If it was really filled up, it couldn't hold any 
more."
"It does though," the wolf said, with a laugh. "It seems to be quite 
bursting full and then try very hard and it still holds
a little more."
Polly thought she knew what this might be, but she didn't want to say in 
case she was wrong.
"I can't guess."
"It's me!" the wolf cried, in delight. "Got you, that time, Polly! 
However full up I am, I can always manage a little bit
more. Your turn next, Polly."
"What," Polly asked, "is the difference between an elephant and a 
pillar-box?"
The wolf thought for some time.
"The elephant is bigger," he said, at last.
"Yes. But that isn't the right answer."
"The pillar-box is red. Bright red. And the elephant isn't."
"Ye-ess. But that isn't the right answer either."
The wolf looked puzzled. After some time he said crossly, "I don't know."
"You mean you can't tell the difference between an elephant and a 
pillar-box?"
"No."
"Then I shan't send you to post my letters," Polly said, laughing at him. 
She thought it was a very funny riddle. But
the wolf didn't think so.
"You don't see the joke, Wolf?" Polly asked.
"I see it, yes. But I don't think it is funny. It's not a real riddle at all. It's 
just silly."
"Now you ask me something," Polly said.
After thinking for a while, the wolf said, "What is the difference 
between pea soup and a clean pocket handkerchief?"
"Pea soup is hot and a pocket handerchief is cold," said Polly.
"No. Anyhow you could have cold pea soup."
"Pea soup is green," said Polly.
"I expect a clean pocket handkerchief could be green too, if it tried," 
said the wolf. "Do you give up?"
"Well," said Polly, "of course I do know the difference but I don't know 
what you want me to say."
"I want you to say you don't know the difference between them," said the 
wolf, crossly.
"But I do," said Polly.
"But then I can't say what I was going to say!" the wolf cried.
He looked so much disappointed that Polly gave in.
"All right, then, you say it."
"You don't know the difference between pea soup and a clean pocket handkerchief?"
"I'll pretend I don't know," said Polly.
"You ought to be more careful what you keep in your pockets," the wolf said. He 
laughed so much at 
this that he
nearly choked.
"Your turn," he said, when he could speak again.
Polly thought for a long time. She had to think of a riddle that the wolf couldn't 
answer.
"Hurry up," said the wolf.
The wolf's long red tongue was so close to Polly that she said, before she had thought 
what she was 
going to say,
"What is it that has teeth, but no mouth?"
"Grrr," said the wolf, showing all his teeth for a moment. "Are you quite sure he 
hasn't a mouth, 
Polly?"
"Quite sure. And I'm supposed to be asking the questions - not you, Wolf."
The wolf did not seem to hear this. He had now turned his back on Polly and was 
gabbling away to himself.
". . . Grandma, so I said the better to see you with, gabble, gabble, gabble. Ears 
you've got, gabble 
gabble better to
hear gabble gabble gabble gabble TEETH gabble eat you all up."
He turned round, looking pleased with himself.
"I've guessed it, Polly. It's a GRANDMOTHER."
"No," said Polly, astonished.
"Well then, Red Riding Hood's grandmother, if you are so fussy. The story mentions her 
eyes and her ears and her teeth, so I expect she hadn't got anything else. No mouth 
anyhow."
"It's not anyone's grandmother."
"Not a grandmother," said the wolf slowly. He shook his head. "It's difficult. Tell me 
some more about it. Are they sharp teeth, Polly?"
"They can be," Polly said.
"As sharp as mine?" asked the wolf, baring his teeth.
"No," said Polly, drawing back a little. "But they are neater," she added.
The wolf shut his jaws with a snap.
"I give up," he said, in a nasty voice. "There isn't anything I know of that has teeth 
and no mouth. 
What use would
the teeth be to anyone without a mouth?"
"It's a comb," said Polly, when she got a chance to speak.
"A what?" cried the wolf in disgust.
"A COMB. What you do your hair with. It's got teeth, hasn't it? But no mouth. A comb, 
Wolf!"
The wolf looked sulky. Then he said in a bright voice, "My turn now, and I'll begin 
straight away. What is the difference between a nice fat young pink pig and a plate of 
sausages and bacon ? You don't know, of course, so I'll tell you. It's-"
"Wolf!" Polly interrupted.
"It's a very good riddle, this one, and I can't blame you for not having 
guessed it. The answer is-"
"WOLF!" Polly said, "I want to tell you something."
"Not the answer?"
"No, not the answer. Something else."
"Well, go on."
"Look, Wolf, we made a bargain, didn't we, that whoever lost three lives running by 
not being able to answer riddles, might be eaten up by the other person?"
"Yes," the wolf agreed. "And you've lost two already, and now you're not 
going to be able to answer the third and then
I shall eat you up. Now I'll tell you what the difference is between a nice 
fat little pink-"
"No!" Polly shouted. "Listen, Wolf! I may have lost two lives already, but 
you have lost three!"
"I haven't!"
"Yes, you have! You couldn't answer the riddle about the hole. You didn't 
know the difference between an elephant
and a pillar-box -"
" I do so!" said the wolf.
"Well, you may now, but you didn't when I asked you the riddle - and you didn't know 
about the comb having teeth and no mouth. That was three you couldn't answer in a row, 
so it isn't you that is going to eat me up."
"What is it then?" the wolf asked, looking scared.
"It's me that is going to eat you up!" said Polly.
The wolf moved rather further away.
"Are you really going to eat me up, Polly?"
"In a moment, Wolf. I'm just thinking how I'll have you cooked," said Polly.
"I'm very tough, Polly."
"That's all right, Wolf. I can cook you gently over a low flame until you 
are tender."
"I don't suppose I'd fit very nicely into any of your pots, Polly."
"I can use the big one Mother has for making jam. That's an enormous 
pot," said Polly. She looked at the wolf to see
how big he was.
The wolf began to shake with fright. "Oh please, Polly, don't eat me. 
Don't eat me up this time," he begged. "Let me
off this once - I promise I'll never do it again."
"Never do what again?" Polly asked.
"I don't know. What was I doing?" the wolf asked.
"Trying to get me to eat," Polly said.
"Well of course, I'm always doing that," the wolf agreed.
"And you would have eaten me?" Polly asked.
"Not if you'd asked very nicely, I wouldn't," the wolf said. "Like I'm asking now."
 "And if I didn't eat you up, you'd stop trying to get me?"
 The Wolf thought about this. "Look," he said, "I
can't say I'll stop for ever, because after all a wolf is a
wolf, and if I promised to stop for ever I wouldn't be a
 wolf any more. But I promise to stop for a long time. I
won't try any more today."
 "And what about after today?" Polly asked.
 "The first time I catch you," the wolf said, "if you ask
me very nicely I'll let you go because you've let me off
 today. But after, that, no mercy! It'll be just Snap! Crunch!
 Swallow!"
 Polly thought for a while. So far the wolf had not
 caught her even once.
 "All right," she said, "you can go."
 The wolf thanked her and trotted off. Polly saw him
 making his way between busy shoppers in High Street. But she sat happily in the hot 
sun and wondered what was the difference between a fat pink pig and a plate of 
sausages and bacon. Not much, if she knew her wolf! 

Crocodiles Alive-O!
by Ruth Park 
illustrated  by Peter Warner
How excited Witchetty was when the station boss told him that they were going 
crocodile-shooting that night!
"Bimeby me catchum croc, too," Witchetty promised himself. He was an Australian 
Aborigine and was only seven years old.
It was a very dark night, as though a curtain had been hung over the stars. The 
station boss, Witchetty, and Yunda, the 
station hand, who was Witchetty's big brother, climbed into the flat-bottomed boat, 
and with a shove and a jump they were off down the rapids of the flooded river.
There was a small spotlight fixed to the bow, and, as the little boat bounced and 
danced down the rapids, white flashes of 
light flickered over the rough water. Clouds of insects flocked towards the
light, whirling around Witchetty's head and singing a wild, high song. Now and then, 
the boat grated over a hidden rock, and 
Witchetty slapped his legs with delight. It was very exciting.
"Look! Look!" he yelled suddenly, pointing to a cluster of little ruby lights at the 
side of the stream. They were the eyes 
of crocodiles, watching the spotlight.
"Wait till we get down to the Katie Pool," said the boss.
Witchetty hung over the side as they spun down the stream. Once he saw a water-snake, 
like a black and
yellow leather belt, swim alongside the boat for a little, with only its pointed head 
out of the water.
"Bimeby me catchem snake, too," whispered Witchetty to himself.
Soon the boat slid silently into the glossy darkness of
a huge pool. Above the hanging banks sharp-leaved trees stood up all around, black as 
ink against the sky. And there, right 
before the nose of the boat, Witchetty saw another pair of little red lights,
staring and staring. The boss gently turned the spotlight on to the crocodile, so that 
Witchetty could also see its two humpy 
nostrils sticking up above the surface of the water. Beneath the water he could see 
the queer, wavy pattern on its scaly skin, and its four stumpy legs, moving gently.
The crocodile could not see anything else but the light.
"Now!" whispered the boss, and Yunda thrust the paddle in deep, and the boat trembled 
and was still. 
There was the
crash of a rifle, and Witchetty jumped like a cricket with fright. He saw the two eyes 
of the 
crocodile wink out like
tiny lamps. Then there was a great thrashing in the water, its tail lashed over and 
over in the 
spray, and the crocodile
sank below the water.
"You shootem, Boss!" cried Witchetty joyously. "Ha, ha, you killem stone dead."
Yunda, flashing all his white teeth in a happy grin, took a spear and drove strongly 
down through the 
water to where
the white glimmer of the underside of the crocodile showed. He pulled it to the 
surface, and he and 
the boss hoisted it
across the stern of the boat. 
Now Witchetty could have a good look at it. It was as long as Yunda, who was a grown 
man, and its 
snout was long and thin, and turned up a little on the end, like an old shoe left out 
in the rain. It was as lumpy and knobbly and gnarled as though it were carved out of 
grey wood, and its eyes were open and staring like bulgy, yellow beads.
Witchetty took a little twig and poked up the yellow frill which edged its mouth. He 
saw a long row 
of great, curved
teeth, interlocking one with the other. Then, suddenly, the jaws of the crocodile 
opened, and snapped 
like a pair of
scissors right in Witchetty's face!
Witchetty gave a howl of fright, and at the same moment the boss reached back along 
the boat and brought the butt of his rifle down across the crocodile's head. It 
shuddered all over and lay still, its jaws going loose and open.
"That croc only gammon dead," growled Yunda. "Pretty soon he snap your nose off, 
Witchetty."
"He's dead all right this time," said the boss. "But don't put your fingers in his 
mouth, youngster."
Witchetty's eyes were as big as pennies. They rolled around in his head like marbles. 
He edged as far down the boat as he could get, staring over his shoulder at the 
crocodile, expecting that it might again waken from the dead and scuttle after him.
Within two hours, the boss had shot another four crocodiles, but this time he tied 
their jaws with 
leather thongs before
he hung them over the stern. Witchetty began to feel much braver, and, when the boat 
slid silently 
amongst a whole
family of young crocodiles, he leaned over the side and cried: "Now we catchum, Boss!"
Like swimming lizards, the queer, big-eyed, knobbly little creatures, no more than a 
foot long, 
appeared and
disappeared in the water. They opened their jaws in funny crocodiley grins as the men 
grabbed at them with their hands, and then with a flick and a bubble they would be 
gone. All at once Witchetty seized one around the middle.
Ugh! How cold and queer it felt! It paddled its stubby paws in the air, and clicked 
its mouth open 
and shut, making a
hissing sound like an angry cat. Witchetty was seized with terror.
"Oh! Yunda! You takem!" he cried, flinging it at his brother. It slithered down to the 
bottom of the 
boat, and the boss
picked it up and shoved it head first into a kerosene-tin.
"Good boy, Witchetty," said he. Witchetty chuckled with pride and joy. He said over 
and over to 
himself, "Good boy, Witchetty." Then he leaned over and grabbed at another crocodile. 
Soon they had five, scrabbling and 
hissing in the
tin.
Then, over the dark pool and the shadowy bushland, came the pale light of the moon. A 
fox gave its 
mournful cry, and
a flock of bats, quivering their dry, leathery wings like butterflies, flicked 
overhead.
"Time we were turning back," said the boss. They paddled slowly upstream to the 
landing-beach.
While the men tied up the boat, Witchetty peered into the kerosene-tin.
"You no bitem dogs, horses, cattle any more, you crocodile! You go to zoo!"
"Those little fellows won't bite stock, Witchetty," explained the boss. "They're the 
Johnstone crocodiles, and never grow any bigger than five or six feet. They eat fish 
and rabbits. It's only the big man-eater that attacks stock and men, and sometimes he 
grows up to thirty feet long. "
"This fella try to bite me," said Witchetty stubbornly. "He try, but me too fast."
And he took a stick and gave the big, dead crocodile a good whacking.

Mrs Andrew of Clovernook Road
by Gertrude Flannery
illustrated by Graham Percy

One day the Mayor and all the town councillors arrived at the town hall for a meeting.
Outside the town hall the Parks Committee had found a place just big enough 
to plant a cabbage tree. All the
councillors watched.
"I think the Parks Committee is planting too many trees," the Mayor 
whispered to Councillor Thompson.
At the meeting the Mayor said, "Our city is growing."
"It has two hundred and fifty thousand people," the Town Clerk said.
"It is one of the largest cities in New Zealand," said Councillor Thompson.
The Mayor said, "There are so many buses and cars and lorries and oil 
tankers and transport carriers coming and
going to and from our city that our roads are not wide enough to hold them all. What 
we want is a new road. The longest and best road in the land."
"Hear hear," said all the councillors.
"The widest and smoothest in the Southern Hemisphere. We want in fact a 
motorway, so that all the buses and cars and trucks and trailers and tankers can come 
and go without getting in one 
another's way."
"Hear hear," said the councillors.
"Those in favour?" And all the councillors raised their hands. It was 
decided that a motorway must be built.
Surveyors came with their instruments and took measurements. Engineers were 
consulted. The councillors went up
in an aeroplane which took photographs.
Finally, when the land had been thoroughly inspected and everybody had 
talked together, they said, "This is the best
place for the motorway. The motorway must go here." And they drew a picture 
of a great wide curving motorway
through paddocks and over houses.
There were bulldozers and tractors and trucks and graders and other great 
machines that looked as though they
could scoop up whole houses and throw them into the next paddock. Bit by 
bit the motorway was built and began to
reach out into the country.
While one group of men worked at one end of the motorway, building it south 
into the country, another group of men
worked at the other end, building it north over the city. They were 
building a great viaduct that would lift the road up
over the city and shops and people's heads.
From time to time the councillors had a tour of inspection to see how the work was 
getting on.
In Clovernook Road all the houses had to be moved to make way for the giant pillars to 
hold the viaduct. Some of the houses were too old to be shifted and were going to be 
pulled down. All the people seemed quite willing to leave their houses, except one old 
lady who was ninety years old and who had lived in her house for forty-two years.
When Mr Jenks, the works manager, knocked on her door and politely asked her when she 
would be 
moving, she
said, "Oh, but I don't really want to move. I'm very old. I've lived here for a long 
time. I don't 
want another house. I'm
fond of this old house. I really couldn't stand the thought of moving. Couldn't I stay 
?"
"But we'll be working right in your back yard. The viaduct's going right over your 
house," said Mr Jenks.
"I wouldn't mind the noise. As a matter of fact I'm a bit deaf."
So Mr Jenks said he would see what could be done about it, and he went and talked to 
the Council and 
the Council
talked to the engineers. And when the engineers heard about it their hearts melted. 
They all agreed 
that Mrs Andrew
could keep on living in her house where she had lived for forty-two years.
Mrs Andrew was delighted. She stayed on in her house while the men worked all round 
and over her 
head. They had
eight cranes and tons of steel and concrete. A few inches away from the corner of her 
house they 
built a great mass
of steel scaffolding and right in the middle of her back yard they built an enormous 
concrete column sixty-five feet high.
Many people began to wonder how Mrs Andrew could bear to listen to the noise all day. 
But she said, 
"I don't mind at
all. They're the nicest lot of men you could ever meet. They're so thoughtful and 
kind. No, I don't 
mind the noise. In
fact at the weekend, when they've all gone away, it's far too quiet."
A reporter who came to see her wrote it all down and put it in the newspaper. Her 
photograph was on 
the front page.
Mrs Andrew was amazed. She hadn't expected they would write about her on the front 
page, but the fact 
was she
was the only person in the whole of New Zealand who had a viaduct being built over her 
house.
On the last day of June, just as Mrs Andrew was thinking about having her morning cup 
of tea, there 
was a sudden
loud knock on her door. Mr Jenks was there and it seemed as though most of the men on 
the site were 
there too.
They had a surprise for her they said. Two men came forward with an enormous three-
tiered cake. It 
was the biggest
cake Mrs Andrew had ever seen. And then she suddenly remembered - the last day of 
June. It was her birthday! There had been so much
activity about the place, so many comings and goings that in the 
excitement she had quite forgotten.
"Well," she said, "how kind you all are. Fancy remembering my birthday. 
And fancy me forgetting it. Thank you all,
thank you everyone. But now we must cut this beautiful cake, and you must 
all help me to eat it because I certainly
couldn't, even if I lived to be a hundred."
All the men thought that an excellent idea and gave a great cheer when 
someone brought a knife and Mrs Andrew cut
the first piece. There were flasks of wine and each man raised his glass 
and drank to Mrs Andrew and wished her
many more years of good health. Mrs Andrew drank from her glass and 
wished a long life and good health to all the
men.
So the birthday passed and everyone began to think about their own 
affairs again except Mr Jenks, who kept on
thinking about Mrs Andrew. "When the viaduct is finished her house will 
be right under it. The viaduct will block out
the sun and it will be too cold for her."
The chief engineer was also concerned about her. "We must find her 
another house," he said; and they thought about
the problem a lot and had many discussions together. At last they decided they were 
ready to tell Mrs Andrew about their plan for her.
One morning Mr Jenks, walked across to Mrs Andrew's house and asked her 
if she would like to go for a drive with him. Mrs Andrew was very pleased and said she 
would be ready early in the afternoon when he said he would call for her.
They drove for some time out into the newer suburbs of the city. Mrs Andrew was 
surprised to see all the new streets and the new houses going up everywhere. Finally 
Mr Jenks drove slowly up to a sign which said Clovernook Road. Mrs Andrew was 
astonished.
"Another Clovernook?"
"Well, there's not going to be much left of the old Clovernook so they were able to 
use the name for this street. As a matter of fact this land used to belong to Mr 
Matheson. He divided it up and made it into a street with new houses."
They drove into the new Clovernook Road. Mrs Andrew found that there was a 
wide circular lawn in the middle. They
drove down one side and up the other. All the houses were new, with neat lawns and 
gardens. A door opened at one of the houses and a small boy ran out. He stopped and 
waved to the car as it went slowly past. Mrs Andrew could hear the voices of other 
children playing nearby.
"It's a lovely street," she said.
They drove round again and Mr Jenks stopped at a small white house with a yellow door 
and blue shutters at the windows. There was a small porch at the front and a rocking 
chair.
"There's someone sitting in that rocking chair," said Mrs Andrew.
"Yes, it's someone you know. Will you come in with me?"'
They walked up the path together and the figure in the rocking chair 
stood up to meet them.
"Why, it's Mr Matheson, the chief engineer," said Mrs Andrew.
They all went into the house. In the kitchen were blue gingham curtains 
at the windows and a gleaming sink bench.
Mrs Andrew could find nothing but praise for each room.
"It's really charming," she said, "but where's the owner? Are you the 
owner, Mr Matheson?"
"It hasn't got an owner yet, Mrs Andrew. We like it and we thought you 
would too." They explained to her how her house was going to be shaded by the viaduct 
and how cold it would be.
"We thought you wouldn't mind leaving your own house when you had seen 
this one."
"Oh yes, I like it. I like it very much. It's everything you want a house to be. It's 
a dream house," said Mrs Andrew.
They went out into the porch and Mrs Andrew sat down in the rocking chair.
"Now this is a wonderfully comfortable chair," she said. "Does it belong to the house 
?"
"Yes it does, Mrs Andrew," said Mr Matheson. "I thought you might like it. My 
grandmother used to have one on her porch. She had a small white house like this. And 
do you know what else she had? At the back of her house she had a walnut tree."
"A walnut tree? That's very interesting. A walnut tree. That's very 
interesting indeed. I've never heard of anyone having a walnut tree before," said Mrs 
Andrew.
"Are you sure the chair's all right, Mrs Andrew?"
"It's just right, Mr Matheson. Everything's just right."

The Magic Bed-Knob 
by Mary Notton illustrated by Barbara Brown

Early one morning, three children went out to pick mushrooms. Their names were Carey, 
Charles and Paul. Carey was a girl about your age, Charles was a little younger and 
Paul was only six. The sun was just 
coming up when they got out into the garden, and there they saw a lady who lived near 
them. Her name was Miss Price, and her clothes were all creased and torn. She was 
quite an old lady and she was sitting under a tree. This seemed a funny thing for her 
to do so early in the morning.
Miss Price said that she had hurt her ankle and she asked them to help her get back to 
her own house. 
"I can put one arm round your shoulders," she said to Carey, "and one arm round his." 
She pointed to Charles.
"And I'll carry this," said Paul, picking up a broom.
"We don't want that," Carey said.
"But it's Miss Price's," said Paul. "She fell off it. It's what she rides on."
Miss Price began to cry. "Oh dear!" she said. "0h dear! Now I suppose everybody 
knows."
The children tried to make her feel better, and at last they got her back to her 
house. Paul came behind with the broomstick.
That was the beginning of some very strange happenings for Carey, Charles and Paul, 
which you can read about in The Magic Bed-Knob by Mary Norton. Here is Chapter Two of 
the story.
More About Her
Afterwards, on the way home, Carey and Charles asked Paul a lot of questions.
"Paul, why didn't you tell us you'd seen Miss Price on a broomstick?"
"I don't know."
"But, Paul, you should have told us. We'd have liked to see it too. It was very mean 
of you, Paul."
Paul did not reply.
"When did you see her?"
"In the night."
Paul felt as if he might be going to cry. Miss Price always went past on 
her broomstick so quickly. She would have
gone past before he could call anyone, and they would have all said, "Don't 
be silly, Paul." Anyway, it had been his
secret. Paul's bed was next to the window. When the moon was full, it shone 
on his pillow and woke him up. It had
been fun to lie there, looking at the sky. Some nights, he did not wake up. 
Other nights, he woke up and she did not
come. But he saw her quite often and, each time he saw her, she had learned 
to fly a little better.
First of all, she had found it hard to stay on the broomstick. She would 
hold it with one hand and try to hold her hat on
with the other. Her feet in their long shoes looked very funny. Once she 
did fall off and the broomstick came down
quite slowly, with Miss Price holding on hard to the handle. Paul was very 
worried. He watched her until she hit the
ground. That time she did not hurt herself.
He did not tell the others about it, because he wanted to be proud of Miss 
Price. He did not want them to see her
until she was really good at it and could do tricks on her broomstick.
Once, when she had lifted both hands in the air at the same time, Paul 
nearly clapped. He knew that was hard to do,
even on a bicycle.
"You see, Paul," Carey was saying, "it was really very selfish. Now Miss 
Price has hurt her ankle, and she won't be
flying again for ages. Charles and I may never be able to see her!"
Later, as they were eating lunch, Aunt Beatrice said, "Poor Miss Price!" 
They all jumped and looked up, as if she had read their secret thoughts. Then she 
said, "It seems she has fallen off her bicycle and hurt her ankle. Poor dear! I must 
send her some peaches."
Paul sat very still. He looked first at Charles and then at Carey.
"Aunt Beatrice," said Carey after a pause. "Could we take the peaches to 
Miss Price?"
"That's very nice of you, Carey. Do you know where she lives?"
Paul nearly said something, but Charles kicked him hard. Feeling put out, 
Paul finished his rice pudding.
"Yes, Aunt Beatrice, we do know where she lives," said Carey.
At about four o'clock in the afternoon, the children knocked at Miss 
Price's front door. Her garden was full of flowers.
The door was opened by Agnes, a village girl, who worked for Miss Price for 
a few hours a day.
When the children first walked into the little sitting-room, they felt very shy. Miss 
Price lay on the sofa. Her bandaged
foot was raised up on pillows. She still looked pale, but now her hair was tidy and 
her white blouse was neat and clean.
"What lovely peaches!" she said. "Thank you, my dears, and thank your aunt. Very kind 
of her, I'm sure. Sit down, sit down." The children sat down carefully on the little 
chairs.
"Agnes is making us some tea. You must stay and have some with me."
The children helped to set the table for tea. They were having scones, 
bread and butter, quince jelly and ginger cake.
They enjoyed their tea. When it was over, they helped Agnes to clear the 
dishes off the table. Then Miss Price
showed Charles and Carey how to play a card game and let Paul read a big book full of 
pictures, called Paradise Lost. Paul liked 
the book very much. He liked the old smell of
it and the pages with gold edges.
They had finished the game of cards and it was nearly time to go home.
"Miss Price," said Carey, as if she were afraid to ask. "Are you a witch?"
There was silence for a moment, and Carey felt frightened. Paul looked up 
from his book.
Very carefully, Miss Price put the cards away on the little table beside 
the sofa. She picked up her knitting and
unfolded it.
"Well," she said slowly, "I am and I'm not."
Paul sat up straight. "You mean, you are sort of?" he asked.
Miss Price looked at him. "I mean, Paul," she said quietly, "that I am 
learning to be a witch." She knitted a few
stitches.
"Oh, Miss Price!" cried Carey. "How terribly clever of you! "
It was the best thing she could have said. Miss Price blushed, but she 
looked pleased.
"How did you first think of it, Miss Price?"
"Well, ever since I was a girl I've been quite good at witchcraft, but I never had the 
time to do it properly. I had piano lessons and looked after my mother."
Paul looked hard at Miss Price. "I don't think you're a wicked witch," he said.
Miss Price looked sad. "I know, Paul, she said quietly. "You're quite 
right. I started too late in life. That's the whole trouble."
"Is being wicked the hardest part?" asked Carey.
"It is for me," Miss Price told her rather sadly. "But there are people who find it 
easy to be wicked."
 "Paul does," said Charles.
 Paul came nearer and sat down on a chair. He was
still looking at Miss Price, as if he wanted to ask her something. After a minute, he 
felt brave enough. "Could you just do a little bit of magic for us now ?" 
"Oh, Paul!" cried Carey. "You mustn't worry Miss Price like that. She can't do magic 
with a sore ankle."
"Yes, she could," said Paul angrily. "She could do it lying down, couldn't you, Miss 
Price?"
"Well," said Miss Price, "I am a little tired, Paul. But I'll just do a little quick 
bit must all go home."
She looked at Paul, and when Carey and Charles turned round to look at him too Paul's 
chair was 
empty. Paul had
gone, but in his place sat a little yellow frog.
Before Carey or Charles had time to say anything, Paul was back again, still looking 
at Miss Price 
and waiting for
something to happen.
"Oh," cried Carey, "that was wonderful! How did you do it?"
She felt almost afraid. Magic - a spell - she had seen it with her own eyes!
"I didn't see anything," said Paul crossly.
 "Oh, don't be silly, Paul!" said Carey. "You turned into a frog. You must have felt 
it."
Paul was nearly crying. "I didn't feel anything, he said, in a squeaky little voice. 
But nobody heard him. They were looking at Miss Price.  
"Miss Price," said Carey, " you could have done that at the church concert instead of 
singing."
Miss Price put down her knitting. A strange look came into her face and she looked 
hard at Carey, as it she didn't know her.
Frightened, Carey sat back in her chair. "Although you sing so nicely," she said 
quickly.
But Miss Price did not seem to hear. Her lips moved quietly, as if she were saying a 
poem. "There must be some way," she was saying slowly "There-must-be-some-way . . ."
"Some way of what?" asked Charles, feeling a bit scared.
Miss Price smiled. They saw that she had long yellow teeth.
 "Of keeping your mouths shut," she said in a hard voice.
Carey was upset. Miss Price was not being very nice.
"Oh, Miss Price!" she said unhappily.
"Of keeping your mouths shut," said Miss Price slowly.
She was smiling in a way that was not very nice at all. Paul looked 
pleased. "Now she's getting wicked," he
whispered to Carey happily.
Carey turned her head the other way as if she had not heard him. She looked worried.
"What do you mean, Miss Price? You mean we mustn't tell any one that-" she stopped.
"That you're a witch?" said Paul.
But Miss Price looked as though she couldn't hear or see the children.
"In just a minute I'll think of something," she said to herself. "In just a 
minute-"
Then Carey did something which Charles thought was very brave. She got up 
from her chair and sat down beside
Miss Price on the sofa.
"Listen, Miss Price," she said. "We did try to help you when you hurt your 
ankle. You don't have to use any kind of
bad magic on us. If you want to stop us telling, you could do it in a nice 
kind of way."
Miss Price looked at her. "How could I do it in a nice kind of way?" she 
asked, but she sounded nicer.
"Well," said Carey, "you could give us something - something magic-and if we 
told anyone about you we'd have to give
it up. You know, like a game. As soon as we told something about you, the 
thing you gave us would stop being
magic."
"What sort of thing?" asked Miss Price.
"A ring or something that we could turn and a slave comes," said Charles. 
"And if we told about you the slave
wouldn't come any more. Couldn't you do that?"
Miss Price thought for a moment. "Not a slave," she said.
"Well, something like that."
Miss Price sat very quiet. She was thinking hard. "I know," she said, after a while. 
Suddenly she seemed quite nice
and happy again. "There's something I've been wanting to try out. Mind you, I'm not 
sure that it will work. Has anybody got a ring on him?"
But none of them had. Paul felt in his pockets, just in case, but found 
nothing but the brass knob he had taken from
his bed that morning.
"Well, anything. A bracelet would do - or something else you can turn."
But Carey didn't have a bracelet with her either. "I've got one at home, " she said, 
"but I only wear it on Sundays."
"You can turn this," said Paul, holding out the bed-knob. "That's just what 
it does. It turns and it turns and it turns.
That's how I got it off the bed."
Miss Price took the bed-knob and held it between her clean skinny fingers.
"Let me see," she said slowly. Then she looked up and smiled. "Paul, I think this is 
the best thing you could have given me."
Paul was pleased, but he felt shy.
"Now I could do a wonderful spell with this - but I must think it out very 
carefully. Be quiet, children, and let me think - so that I can get this right."
The children sat very still. Even Paul forgot to play with things. The only 
sound in the room was from a bumble-bee
that had come in the window.
After a long time, Miss Price opened her eyes. And then she sat up, 
smiling. "There you are, Paul," she said happily,
and gave him back the bed-knob.
"Is the spell done?" he asked. It looked just the same to him.
"Yes, it's quite done," Miss Price told him. "And it's a very good spell indeed. This 
is something you'll enjoy. Only don't get yourselves into trouble."
Carey and Charles were looking at Paul, both wishing it was their bed-knob.
"What must we do with it?" asked Charles.
"Just take it home and put it back on the bed. But don't do it right up. Just put it 
on about half-way."
"And then?"
"And then?" Miss Price smiled. "Turn it a little and wish - and the bed will 
take you wherever you want to go.
The children looked in wonder at the shiny ball in Paul's rather dirty hand.
"Really?" asked Carey.
Miss Price was still smiling. She seemed very pleased with herself.
"Well, try it."
"Oh, Miss Price!" said Carey, still looking at the knob. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me," said Miss Price, picking up her
knitting again.  "Remember what we said? One word about me and the spell is broken."
"Oh, Miss Price!" said Carey again. She didn't know what to say.
"Well, now, off you go. It's getting late. As I say, don't get yourselves 
into trouble and don't go riding around all night."
The spell did work after a bad start or two, and the children found it hard 
to tell their mother and father why some
strange things happened . . . .
Adapted from The Magic Bed-knob, by Mary Norton.

Mustafa the Buffalo Boy  
by D. P. Tampubolon illustrated by Olga Volger

One hot Friday evening, Mustafa was sitting on the front steps of his home. 
He did not want to play with the other children of the village. He was thinking about 
his school friends who were now at high school in a town a long way away.
Mustafa wanted to be a doctor when he grew up, but first he would have to go to high 
school. His father was too poor to send him to the high school in the town.
He looked up and saw the chief of the village walking towards him.
"Good evening, Mustafa," said the chief.
"Good evening, sir," said Mustafa.
Mustafa's father came to the door. "Good evening, Chief," he said. "Please come in and 
sit down."
The chief said, "I have come to see you about Mustafa. I need a boy to look after my 
buffaloes and to milk them each morning. I'd like to give Mustafa the job. I would 
give him forty tins of rice at harvest time."
"That seems very fair, and Mustafa could do with a job," said his father. 
"Just a minute, I'll ask him."
He called Mustafa and told him what the chief had said.
"But I don't know how to milk buffaloes," said Mustafa.
"Don't worry about that," said the chief. "We'll soon teach you. If you want 
the job, I'd like you to start tomorrow
morning."
Mustafa said he would work for the chief, and the chief went home feeling very happy.
Mustafa Goes to Work
Mustafa was sitting in the hot sun, watching the buffaloes.
Then Bobo, the buffalo he liked best of all, came out of some bushes. He 
was very big, with two long horns, and
Mustafa rode him out to the hills in the morning and back home every 
night.
From the hill he was standing on, Mustafa could see the rice in the 
fields.
He thought! "Two months ago the rice was planted. That means that in two 
more months time the harvest will begin.
Then the chief will pay me." He felt happy.
He was hot, so he lay on his back under a shady tree. He was nearly 
asleep when he heard someone calling: "Too!
Too! Too! Too!"
He stood up and looked around, but he could see nothing.
"It might be another buffalo boy calling his buffaloes," he thought. "I 
had better call mine, to let him know I'm here."
He called out "Bo! Bo! Bo! Bo!"
The other voice shouted back, "Hey! What are you doing here?"
"Looking after my buffaloes," said Mustafa. "Would you like to play a 
game?"
Then three boys came out of the bush. He knew one of them.
"Hullo, Peter," he said, feeling surprised. "Who are your friends?"
"This is Sam and that's Russell. We live in the same village. We're buffalo 
boys. Are you one, too?"
"Yes," said Mustafa. "I've just started. Look, it's lunch time, and I have 
an idea. What have you got for lunch?"
"Just rice," said Sam.
"Let's shoot some birds to eat," said Mustafa.
Many Indonesian boys carry catapults. They use them to shoot stones at 
birds and small animals. Some boys
become very good and nearly always hit the animal they are shooting at.
Mustafa said, "We'll all look in different parts of the forest. If you get 
into trouble, you must call out at once and we'll
all come to help you."
Then the boys went into the forest. Peter saw a wild dove eating some 
berries on the branch of a tree. He took careful
aim and fired. The stone hit the dove on the neck. Poor dove! It dropped to 
the ground dead. Peter put it in his bag
and went off to look for more.
Mustafa killed a wild pigeon and then a magpie. He was just going to shoot 
another magpie when a squirrel scared it
away. Mustafa was so angry he shot at the squirrel, but he missed it.
Russell was not very good with a catapult and he was growing very cross, 
because he hadn't shot anything.
Sam was just going to shoot a parrot when he heard Russell shout: "Help! 
Snake! Snake!"
Sam was angry because the parrot flew away, and he thought, "He made me 
miss. Let him look after himself."
Then Russell called out again. He sounded very frightened. Sam ran quickly 
and found him kneeling on the grass. He
was very still. He pointed at a branch above him, and Sam saw a green snake 
moving very close to Russell's head. Then he pointed at his feet and Sam saw that his 
feet were caught in the grass.
There was only one thing to do. Sam took out his catapult.
Just then, Mustafa and Peter arrived. "Stop," said Mustafa. "The one who shoots must 
not miss, and I have hit more
birds than any of you, so I must be the best shot here."
Mustafa took out a stone and put it in his catapult. Carefully, he took 
aim. The other boys looked worried. Russell
thought he might get hit.
"Whack!" went the catapult. Russell cried out, and the snake slowly fell 
from the tree. Sam made sure it was dead by
breaking its back with a stick.
"Whew!" said Russell, looking very frightened. "That was close."
"Are you all right?" said Mustafa, helping him get his foot out of the 
grass.
"Yes. Thanks to you. I've never seen such good shooting," said Russell.
Mustafa said nothing, but he was very pleased.
"Let's have lunch," said Peter.
Mustafa lit a fire at the foot of the hill, while the others got the birds ready.
"I think three of us should look at the buffaloes to see if they're all 
right," said Mustafa. "Sam, you can cook the birds,
while we go and have a look."
"All right," said Sam. While the others were away, he cooked the birds and 
cut them into pieces. Soon the others
came back and said that the buffaloes had not gone away. Then they ate 
their lunch.
"Time to go home," said Mustafa, when they had finished eating.
As they walked back to the buffaloes, it started to rain.
"Look," said Sam. "There's a rainbow."
"Don't point at it, you fool," said Russell, "Your finger will become all 
bent. My grandmother said so, and there's not
much she doesn't know."
Sam was frightened and put his finger in his pocket.
"I have heard," said Peter in a whisper, "that, if it rains while the sun 
is shining, the tiger comes out of the forest."
The boys looked around them, and Sam was beginning to be very frightened.
They hurried down the hill, trying to be very quiet. The smallest noise in 
the bushes frightened them.
They called their buffaloes and quickly started for home. The sun was still 
shining through the light rain.
The Tiger Walks
Each boy rode the buffalo he liked best. The only noise was the sound of 
the buffaloes' hooves and the ringing of the
bells around their necks.
Suddenly they heard a roar from the other side of the hill. Their hearts nearly 
stopped beating.
"What's that?" said Sam in a very frightened voice.
"It's nothing. Hurry up," shouted Mustafa, trying not to show that he was frightened. 
He made his buffaloes move faster.
Again the roar came through the forest, and at once one of Peter's 
buffaloes ran away in fright. Then the rest of the
buffaloes ran, too.
"Tiger! Tiger!" shouted Peter, hitting his buffalo to make it move more 
quickly.
"Run, run," shouted Russell, hitting his buffalo.
"Wait for me!" cried Sam. He tried to get his buffalo past the rest of the 
herd, but the other buffaloes were running
down the track. They knocked over bushes as they went.
"Don't leave me behind," shouted Mustafa, who was a long way behind the 
others. He kept hitting Bobo to get past
the other buffaloes. But he couldn't get past.
At last Mustafa's buffalo caught up with the others, and the boys all 
jumped off the buffaloes' backs and climbed into
a big tree. They were very frightened.
The bulls all stood together with their backs against a tree. Their horns 
were down and they looked ready to fight.
All of a sudden, the tiger came out of a thick bush and came towards the 
buffaloes, growling. It was orange, yellow
and black. The boys held on to their branches more tightly. The tiger gave 
them a fright when it stopped and looked
up at them, just before it passed under their tree.
The buffaloes had now moved away from the tree and had gone into a 
half-circle, with their horns pointing outwards.
The tiger came closer to Bobo. The buffaloes stood still; they did not look 
frightened. Closer and closer came the
tiger, getting ready to jump. Suddenly it jumped at Bobo, but he swung his head up and 
caught the tiger with his right horn, 
making a large hole in its chest. Another
buffalo quickly drove its horns into it, while it was on the ground. Then 
the tiger jumped at Bobo again, who hit it with
his other horn and made another hole in its chest. This time, it was so 
badly hurt that the other buffaloes soon killed
it.
The boys could not believe the tiger was dead. They thought they could 
still hear it roaring. Underneath the tree, the
buffaloes waited for them to come down.
Then they heard voices. Mustafa could hear someone calling him. It was a group of 
people from his village. Mustafa felt brave again.
"Here I am!" he shouted. The boys climbed down from the tree. They saw a row of 
lights, and then the group of people came up to where they were standing.
Mustafa's father was so pleased to see him that he had tears in his eyes.
"You are brave boys," said the chief. "Your villages will be proud of you." 
He looked at the cuts the tiger had given
Bobo. "These are nothing," he said. "They will soon get better."
"If it hadn't been for Bobo and the other bulls, we might have been dead 
now," said Mustafa. "Tomorrow I will take
them to a place where there is a lot of grass."
The chief laughed. Then everyone went to look at the tiger.
"It's a full-grown tiger," said one.
"It's the biggest one I've ever seen," said another. "It could be the tiger 
that took my pig last month."
"Your mothers will be worried about you," said the chief. "It's time we 
went home."
Four men tied the tiger's legs together and put a pole between each pair of 
legs. Then they lifted the poles on to their
shoulders.
The village was not far away. When they got there, all the village people 
were waiting for them.
The chief asked Mustafa to stand beside him, and then he said, "You all 
know Mustafa. Today he showed how brave
he was, and so did Peter, Russell and Sam. Their own people will thank 
them, - but Mustafa belongs to our village.
So, I am going to give him one of my buffaloes to show him how pleased I am 
with him. And tomorrow night we shall
have a feast."
The people all cheered, and Mustafa's friends all came to ask questions. At last it 
was time to go home. Mustafa walked home with his family. He was very happy.
"I've been thinking about next year," said his father. "Now we have a buffalo I think 
we will have enough money to send you to high school. Did you hear me, son?"
Mustafa was nearly crying. "Yes, Dad," he said in a funny voice. His mother put her 
arms around him.
Mustafa sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. "I don't know what to 
say ... it's what I want most in the world."

The Brave Potter
by Tara Sirka illustrated by Victor Ambrus

One day a tiger was walking by a village, when a big storm started. There was a lot of 
wind and rain. 
The tiger had to look for shelter. He crept close to the wall of a small hut outside 
the village.
Inside the hut lived an old woman. She was also worried about the storm. The roof was 
full of holes, 
and rain dripped through them. The water dripped on to the floor. The old woman ran 
from
place to place. She kept moving her bed about to save it from the rain.
The tiger was lying with his ear against the wall. He heard the old woman dragging the 
bed about. She 
was crying and talking to herself.
"Oh dear," she cried. "This dripping is killing me. I can't escape from it. I can't 
stand it! I can't stand it!"
Then the tiger heard more loud sounds, as the old
woman dragged her bed about. "Stop, stop," she cried.
"It is killing me."
The tiger was worried. "What is this Dripping?" he
thought. "It must be an awful thing."
Once more he heard the loud sound of the bed. The
woman was again pulling it across the floor.
"I don't like that sound," he said. "That must be the
nasty thing that is called Dripping."
And so the tiger lay close to the wall. He was waiting
for the rain to stop.
Just then a potter came along the dark road. He was
looking for his donkey, which had run away in the storm.
He saw the tiger and he thought it was his donkey. He
ran up to the tiger and took it by one ear. He began to
kick it and beat it.
"You stupid donkey," he shouted. "Why should I have
to go out looking for you on a wet night like this?"
Once more he began to hit the tiger with his stick.
"Get up on your feet at once, or I shall hit you harder."
The potter got more and more angry. He kicked and
shouted. The tiger became frightened. No one had ever
done this to him before.
Then he thought that this must be the awful Dripping
that had been killing the old woman.
The tiger got to his feet. The potter still thought that
the tiger was his donkey. He hit him a few more times and
got on his back. Then he made the tiger carry him home.
He kicked him and shouted at him all the way.
When he got to his house, he tied the tiger to a post
by his door. Then he went into his house and slept.
In the morning, the potter's wife went out and saw the tiger. She was very surprised. 
She went to her husband and said, "Do you know what animal you brought home last night 
?"
"Yes," he said, "I brought home that stupid donkey."
"Come and look at him," the woman said.
He got up and looked. When he saw the tiger, he nearly fell over. He felt 
himself all over. He wanted to find out if he
had been hurt. He found that he had not even been scratched.
Soon everyone in the village knew about the potter and the tiger. People 
came to look at the tiger. They listened to
the potter's story. He told them how he had got on the tiger's back and 
brought him home.
The potter's story was told in other villages. Soon the king of the country 
heard the story of the potter riding the tiger.
He was so surprised that he decided to go and talk to the potter.
The king rode to the potter's house with his men, and found that the story 
was true. He was even more surprised
when he learned that the tiger was a very wild one. It had been frightening 
the people in the villages round about.
The king was so pleased with the potter that he gave him many houses and a 
lot of land. He also made him a
general, and gave him a large army of soldiers.
The potter and his wife began to enjoy themselves, because they were now 
very rich. They had everything that money could buy.
But soon there came news that a great army was coming to attack the 
country. The king become worried and called his generals together.
"Which one of you will lead my soldiers against this army?" he asked. None of his 
generals wanted to lead his soldiers. All of them were frightened, because the 
attacking army was so large.
Then the king thought of the brave potter who had gone for a ride on a tiger. He 
called for him, and when he came, the king said, "I want you to lead my soliers. You 
must drive the enemy from our country."
The potter was frightened, but he said to the king, "I will lead your 
soldiers, but first I must go and look at the army of the enemy."
Then the potter went home to his wife and told her what had happened. "This is a hard 
thing for me to do," he said to her. "The king wants me to lead his army, but I can't 
even ride a horse. 
You must find me a gentle horse, so I won't fall off. I must have it before tomorrow."
But the next morning, the king's men brought him a big wild horse. They 
said that the king wanted him to ride it when he went to look at the army of the 
enemy.
The potter was now very frightened. The horse was big, and it would not 
stay still. But the potter had to obey the king.
He told the men that he would do what the king had asked.
When they had gone, the potter asked his wife, "How will I do it? I have never been on 
a horse in my life."
"Do not worry," said his wife. "Just get on the horse. I will tie you to 
the saddle with a rope. Then you won't fall off."
So the potter tried to get on the horse, but he did not know how to begin. 
The saddle seemed too high.
"I can't get into it," the potter said.
"You will have to jump," his wife said.
The potter tried jumping, but he could not reach the saddle. Each time he 
jumped he fell on the ground.
"When I jump, I forget which way to turn," he said.
"You must do it so that your face is towards the horse's head," his wife said.
"I know, I know," the potter said. This time he jumped and came down in the 
saddle. But he was looking towards the horse's tail.
"No, no," his wife said. She helped him to get off the horse.
He began all over again. Each time he slipped and fell to the ground. But 
at last he sat in the right way. He was
looking towards the horse's head.
"Hurry," he shouted. "Tie me to the saddle before I fall off."
His wife brought some rope and tied him to the saddle. But the horse kept 
moving about. At last he began to run.
The potter called out, "Wife! Wife! What shall I do?"
"Hold on to the horse's neck," she shouted.
The potter put his arms round the horse's neck, as it ran across the 
fields. They went this way and that, over walls
and up and down hills. The potter just hung on as hard as he could.
When he saw where they were going, he became less happy than before. The 
horse was taking him straight to the
camp of the enemy.
"This must not happen," the potter cried out. And as they passed a small 
tree, he took hold of it. He wanted to pull
himself off the horse. But the horse was running so fast that the potter 
pulled the tree out by its roots. And so he rode
towards the camp of the enemy with the small tree in his hand.
The soldiers of the camp had seen the potter coming. They had seen him ride 
straight towards them. They had seen
him pull up a tree by its roots, and swing it like a club. They thought he 
was in front of a great army that was coming
to attack them.
So they ran away. "Run for your lives," they shouted to each other. "These are not men 
who are attacking us. They are giants."
When he saw his soldiers running away, the king quickly wrote a letter to the potter's 
king. He told him that he and his 
army were going home. Then he got on his
horse and rode after his men.
Just then the potter's horse ran into the middle of the camp, and stopped still. The 
rope round the potter broke, and he fell to 
the ground. The ride had made him sore and tired.
When the potter got up, he was pleased to find that the whole army had run 
away. He found the letter in the king's
tent. He read it and put it in his pocket. Then he walked home, taking the 
horse with him. He had made up his mind
that he would never ride a horse again.
When he reached home, his wife came to meet him. He said, "Oh, wife, since 
I left here, awful things have happened
to me. Now take this letter to the king, and take the horse with you, for 
I want nothing more to do with it."
So the wife took the letter to the king. She told the king that her husband 
had been too tired to bring the letter
himself. He had spent the day fighting the enemy army all by himself. She 
said that her husband would come to see
him in the morning.
The next day, the potter went to see the king. He walked, because he did 
not want to go on the back of a horse.
When the people saw him coming, they said, "There is a brave man! He beat a 
whole army by himself. But that hasn't made him proud. He walks on the ground like one 
of us. He does not sit up high on a horse, as any other man would do."
The king made the potter the richest man in the country. And people still talk about 
him as the man who rode a tiger
and beat an army by himself.

 The Secret Rescue
 by Elsie Locke
 illustrated by Roger Hart

It was a hot day. Alma and Larry had walked three miles to Brown's Beach.
 "It's a safe place for a picnic," Mother had said. "And
Mrs Brown in the farmhouse will help you if you need anything."
 But, when the children came near the farmhouse, they
saw Mr Brown bringing his car out of the garage.
 "We're going to town," he said. "You can get water
from that tap over there, if you want it."
 "Don't go on the raft," said Mrs Brown. "It isn't safe.
It tips over to one side."
 The children said thank you and waved goodbye.
 At the beach, there were two girls, Jillian and Sally.
They were playing on the raft. They laughed when
Larry said the raft wasn't safe.
 "If it tips over, we can get on to the jetty," they said.
 Alma and Larry had had their lunch and were playing
in the sand. Suddenly they heard a shout. The two girls
were jumping up and down and tipping the raft from
one side to the other. Alma and Larry ran to the jetty.
There, they saw that the rope had broken and the raft
was floating away.
 "Why don't you swim back?" called Larry. 
"I'm scared," Jillian said. "The water's too deep." She began to cry. "I can't swim," 
said Sally, and she cried louder than Jillian.
"Sit down and keep still while we go to get help, then," said Larry. "If you jump 
around like that, the raft will go right over, 
for sure."
The girls sat down. Their feet were in the water and they looked very sad.
"Stay there till we get back, now," said Larry.
"We'll be back soon. We're going for Mr Brown," called Alma.
Then they remembered. The Browns had gone to town.
"The next house is more than a mile away," said Alma. "The girls might 
fall off and drown, if we leave them for too long. "
"Or start jumping around again and tip themselves off," said Larry.
"If Mother hadn't made you promise not to swim in the deep water, you 
could swim out and push the raft back," said
Alma. "I wish I could swim, then we could both do it."
"The tide's going out too fast. I know I couldn't do it," said Larry.
"We've got to think of something," Alma said, looking at the girls. The 
raft was much further away. "They might go all
the way round the bay and out to sea."
Larry was thinking hard. Suddenly he said, "I've got it! You've given me an idea, 
Alma!"
He told her his plan. Alma didn't know what to think, but she looked a 
bit happier. "Let's be quick," she said.
Larry put on his swimming shorts, while Alma climbed up the hill. She 
found a good place, where she could see both
the sea and the road.
Larry ran to the jetty. "I'm coming with you," he called to the girls. 
"And I know how to get you back, but you must
promise to do what I say."
They promised, and Larry swam to the raft. When he
 he got there, he found that he could not climb on to it.
 Every time he tried he nearly turned it over.
 "Never mind," he said, "the water's warm. I'll hold
 on here." And so he did, while the raft moved slowly
 along.
 He told them funny stories, and Jillian and Sally
 thought that if Larry was so happy in the water there was
 nothing for them to be frightened about.
 After a long time, they came right across the bay.
 They could see Silver Beach.
 Now Larry started to tell the girls what to do. "Sally,
 I want you to sit very still. Jillian you jump into the
 water with me, hold on tight to the raft and kick as hard
 as you can. We've got to get the raft over to that sand- bank."
 At first Jillian said no, but Larry said he'd pull her
 in if she didn't come. So, she jumped in. At first, the
 raft didn't seem to be moving at all. Larry thought they'd
 go past the sandbank and out to sea. He and Jillian
 wouldn't be able to climb back on to the raft and they
 would all be drowned.
 "Kick harder!" he shouted. Their legs kicked faster
 and faster. They went on and on as hard as they could
 until they were very tired.
 "Ouch! Ouch!" yelled Jillian "I've hit my foot on
 Something."
 "Good!" Larry put his foot down too and touched
 the bottom. The sandbank had a lot of shells on it. They
 scratched and cut the children's feet.
 They shouted and laughed as they began pushing
 the raft to the beach. Soon it was shallow enough for
 Sally to jump in and help. They pulled the raft up on the sand and tied it to a bush.
They all felt thirsty and Larry knew where there was a stream.
Then he remembered Alma. Although they were tired and thirsty, they all 
climbed to the top of a hill and waved to her.
For a while, they stayed by the stream, drinking and resting. Then they 
started out on the long walk home. After a
while, they heard a car. Jillian and Sally went out and asked for a lift, 
but Larry hid himself. He had promised his
mother he wouldn't swim in deep water and he didn't want to be found out.
What had Alma done all this time? She had watched the raft until her eyes 
got sore. She had started to worry. Then
she had an idea. She would ring the police and tell them about the raft. 
But, just as she thought of it, she saw the raft
go in to Silver Beach. Then, after what seemed a long time, she saw three small 
people, looking like dolls, jumping 
up and down on top of a hill.
Alma was very happy. She went home and hid Larry's clothes in the shed 
before she went inside.
"You're early," said Mother. "Where's Larry?"
"He met some children and he's coming home another way. He's awful!" she said. She 
pretended to be cross with him.
At tea time, Larry still hadn't come home. Mother began to worry and ask more 
questions. Alma had promised not to say anything to Mother, so she pretended to sulk. 
This made Mother so cross that she sent Alma off to bed. Alma was very glad.
It was nearly dark when she heard Larry at the window, whispering, "Where are my 
clothes?" She told him. He put on his clothes in the shed and came inside.
"Well," said his mother, "where have you been?"
"I met some children and walked around the beach," he said. "We went too far."
This was quite true. He thought his mother would be cross, but she just 
looked at him. She saw how tired he was and
sent him to have a hot bath. She gave him his tea in bed.
At dinnertime, a few days later, Mother read from the paper: "Last 
Thursday, two girls floated out into the bay on a
raft. They were rescued and brought in at Silver Beach. They say they have 
promised not to tell who it was that
helped them. It was a very brave thing to do and the girls' parents would 
like to thank the unknown rescuer through
this paper."
"I wonder who it could have been?" said Mother. She looked at Larry and 
smiled.

Surprise Beach 
by David Jensen illustrated by Martine Van Hove

On the first sunny day, when the winter was nearly over, I woke up to 
hear my father say, "Jane! It's a lovely day. Get dressed quickly and we'll all go out 
for a picnic!"
I put my clothes on quickly. As soon as breakfast was over, we all jumped 
into the car and drove until we came to
the sea. Dad took the lunch box out of the car while David and I ran 
along the beach to find dry sticks to make a fire.
We were very hungry and wanted our dinner.
Mother followed, bringing a pot full of what she calls "hoosh". This is 
something that Mother makes for our winter
picnics. Hoosh starts with all sorts of vegetables cut up small. Then you 
can put in tomatoes and rice and bacon, or
anything else you like. This makes a lovely mixture which you eat, with a 
spoon in one hand and a piece of bread and
butter in the other.
When we had finished eating, I ran down and washed the plates clean with 
sand and water. Then I stood up and
looked round for something to do. We had never been to this beach before, 
so Mother had called it Surprise Beach. It
was a strip of yellow sand stretching for miles. I couldn't see anything 
on it except driftwood. The only rocks were
near our picnic place. It was like a lonely island, I thought. If I went 
back and asked him, my father might make up a
story about it. So I did.
"All right, Jane. I'll tell you a story about this beach," said Dad. "But you must get 
my pipe from 
the car, first."
I walked slowly to give him plenty of time to think. When I got back, he and Mother 
and David looked 
as if they had a
secret.
Dad filled his pipe. "Don't tell, will you, David."
"I won't," said David. He was only four.
"Good boy! Now children," said Dad. "This is the camp of Black Jack the pirate. We are 
the "goodies". 
Our ship is on
the other side of the island, and we had to cut our way through the bush to get here. 
Black Jack has seen our fire and is sailing around the island, hoping we won't find 
the treasure. You see, he has half of a map 
showing where the
treasure is buried, but we have the other half, and he'd like to get it back."
"Why doesn't he try to?" I said.
"Because he's afraid of Bonny Jane, the girl pirate, and Dead Eye Dave, her brother." 
Dad pointed out 
to sea. "There
he goes," he said. A fishing boat was sailing past.
"The treasure is buried somewhere on this beach," said Dad. "You won't find it by 
digging, unless you 
can guess the
right place, so you must use your brains and eyes, Jane. Black Jack's half of the map 
has three 
things on it which
ours hasn't. But I saw it once. I'll tell you what I remember. I swam out to his ship 
one very dark 
night, climbed up to
the deck and peeped into the cabin. What do you think, I saw?"
"Don't know," I said.
"Black Jack," said Dad. "He was fast asleep in his chair. There was a lamp on the 
table and the map 
lay beside it. It
was pinned to the table by a knife."
"I'll tell you about that another time. Now, listen carefully, Jane, and I'll tell you 
what was on the map. The first thing you have to find is a cave. 
The treasure is in it.
But you won't find the treasure without the second thing, which is three white stones 
in a line. You 
have to hop, skip
and jump past the last stone, and then you must dig. The treasure of silver is buried 
there in a 
strong box." Dad
looked at his watch. "I'll give you half an hour to find it. Don't forget. We have to 
be back on the 
ship before dark."
I knew Dad must have buried a "treasure" while I was getting his pipe from the car. If 
I could find it in half-an-hour I would win a prize.
The first thing to find was a cave. I looked among the rocks. There wasn't a real 
cave, only a sort of hollow. I couldn't
see the three white stones at all, so I went outside
again. I found the stones between two rocks, pointing into the cave. I 
did a hop, a skip and a jump, and then I did it
again, just to make sure.
The sand had been smoothed over just where I landed, and David was 
jumping up and down and trying very hard not
to say anything. I started to dig with my spade. I hadn't been digging 
very long when Mother called out. "Five minutes
more, children! We're going home soon."
As quickly as I could, I dug round the edge of the smooth sand. Suddenly 
I saw a matchbox at the bottom of the
hole. I dug my spade down to get it but it hit something hard. I dug that 
out, too.
Inside the matchbox was a ten-cent piece. The other thing looked like a 
piece of rock, but just to make sure I ran to
the sea and washed it. It wasn't just rock. It was a piece of greenstone!
"Well, have you found the treasure, Jane?" Dad asked.
I ran up with my hands behind my back.
"Yes - and I've found this!" I brought my hands round and showed him.
"A greenstone axe! So you found real treasure. You lucky girl! I wonder 
how it got there?"
"Some Maoris must have been having a picnic here, hundreds of years ago, 
and lost it." Mother laughed. "Perhaps
they were too busy eating roast moa! Did you show it to David? Where is 
he?"
David was bending down to look at something in the driftwood.
"Quick, Daddy," he called. "Come and see my spiders!"
I saw Dad's face change. He ran faster than I'd ever seen him run before. 
He grabbed David off the sand.
Then he called to us, "Here you two! Look at this!"
It was only some little spiders running over the sand.
They were shiny black spiders, with a red line down the middle of their backs.
"Those are katipos," said my father. "If one of them had bitten David, he 
would have been a very sick little boy.
Katipos are the only really poisonous things in New Zealand. They usually 
live near the sea, and hide inside driftwood.
This is just the kind of beach they like. I should have remembered, but I 
didn't. I was even going to fill the back of
the car with firewood from the beach. Just think of that! We might have 
taken home a car full of katipos!"
"No, thank you," said Mother. "We've had an exciting day, and it has all ended 
happily. And now it's time to go home."

Prince Chooses a Home
by Elsie Locke
illustrated by Richard Kennedy

Nobody knew where Prince had come from. When Mrs Jackson went into the garden to see 
what had made two-year-old Bennie laugh so loudly, there was Prince. He was a big 
brown Labrador. As soon as Prince saw her, 
he ran up to
make friends. Mrs Jackson was very surprised. Bennie was afraid of most of the farm 
dogs that lived 
near, and this
dog was bigger than any of them. How had the strange dog got in? There was a high 
fence around their 
house to stop
animals getting in.
When Martin and Noel and Sara came home from school, the dog came running up to them 
as if they were 
old
friends. He seemed to like Martin best of all, so Martin gave him his name. He called 
him Prince.
"Oh, Mum, please say we can keep him!" the children said.
"But he must belong to someone," said Mrs Jackson. "He's a Labrador and I think he's 
pure-bred, that 
means he is
worth a lot of money."
"He hasn't got a collar," said Noel.
"He may not be six months old yet. When they're still pups they don't have to have 
collars," said Mrs 
Jackson.
"How can he be a pup? He's too big!" said Sara.
"Silly!" said Martin. "Mr Johnson's sheepdog's pups are nearly as big as their mother 
already. You're 
just young like
me, aren't you, Prince?"
Prince wagged his tail and look looked if he knew what Martin was saying.
When Mr Jackson came home, the children were at the gate to meet him.
"Dad, Dad! We've got a dog. Please can we keep him?"
Before Mr Jackson could say a word, Prince ran up and looked at him.
"There now, he's asking, too! He wants to stay!" said Martin.
"He must belong to someone," said Mr Jackson.
"That's what Mum told us," said Noel sadly.
Mr Jackson looked at the dog. He knew all the dogs that lived near them, but he had 
never seen this one before.
"We'll have to look in the newspaper to see if anyone's lost him," he said.
Every day the children ran to the gate to get the paper. They were very happy when 
they couldn't find 
anything in it
about a dog like Prince. So, Prince stayed with them. Mr Jackson didn't like dogs very 
much, but he 
liked Prince.
Mrs Jackson said she didn't have to look after Bennie any more, because Prince did it 
for her.
The children soon found out how Prince had come into their place. He was a very good 
jumper. He would 
take a short
run and jump their high fence easily. When Martin came up the road on his way home 
from school, Prince would jump over the gate and race up the road to meet him. Then he 
would follow Martin 
wherever he went. But
he would not go into the house. He had been well trained. He would lie on the mat at 
the door and 
jump up when he
saw the children.
One Sunday, when only Martin and Noel were at home, Prince didn't look very happy. 
Martin left him 
lying in the
sunshine and went inside to find a book to read. A few minutes later, the boys heard 
Prince making a 
terrible noise.
They ran to the window and saw Prince hanging on top of the fence. He must have 
slipped when he was 
trying to
jump over the fence. He was stuck in between the boards of the fence and he was crying 
as though it 
was hurting
him very much.
"Oh Prince, poor Prince!" cried Martin. He started to run out the door, but Noel 
stopped him.
"He'll bite you. He won't understand!"
"I don't care if he does. Let me go!" Martin ran away from Noel and hurried down the 
steps.
 Prince was very frightened. He growled at Martin and tried to bite him. Martin didn't 
know what to 
do. But he couldn't
just stand there and do nothing when Prince was so frightened. He began to talk to 
Prince.
"There now, Prince, you don't mean it. You're only frightened." He tried to lift 
Prince out. But he 
was tightly stuck in
between the boards, and he was very heavy.
"Noel! Noel!" Martin called. Then he said to Prince, "Don't be frightened!"
Noel came out of the door very slowly. He was as frightened as Prince was. He wished 
his father was 
at home.
Then, even though he was still very frightened, he ran to the dog. The boys stood one 
on each side of 
Prince.
They lifted him up as hard as they could.
Suddenly, Prince gave a great push and fell to the ground on the other side 
of the fence. He was still crying as though
he was hurt.
Then he jumped up and ran away from them.
"Poor Prince!" said Noel. He was nearly crying.
"He might be badly hurt," said Martin. "Come on, we'll go after him."
The boys went to look for him. They searched the farm next door from one 
end to the other. They asked at every
house. Some people had seen Prince a long way away. But no one knew where he was.
"He'll come home," Martin said to himself.
Night came, but Prince had not come back. Mrs Jackson telephoned all the people who 
lived near them, but no one knew anything about him. The children were very sad that 
night.
Martin couldn't go to sleep for a long time. Then he had a dream. A man had come from 
the S.P.C.A. He told Martin that he would put him in jail for letting his dog get 
stuck on the fence. 
He took Martin and showed him Prince lying in a shed, looking very, very sick. When 
Martin tried to pat Prince, he barked at him and tried to bite him. Prince grew bigger 
and bigger. The shed turned into the kitchen in Martin's house. 
Every one was shouting, "Open the door! It's the police!"
Martin woke up. It was very early in the morning, but someone really was 
knocking at the door. He ran to the door
and there was Prince. How happy he looked!
Mrs Jackson came to the door too. "Look at him," she said. "He's saying 
thank you."
Martin patted Prince. They stayed out there until everyone in the house was up. That 
morning Prince walked all the way to school with Martin, and it was a long time before 
he would go home.
When Martin came home from school, he wondered if Prince would jump over 
the fence to meet him or if he was too
frightened to jump over the fence again. No, the dog did not come. He 
couldn't see Prince anywhere. There was a
strange car outside the gate. Martin began to run.
He ran into the house calling, "Mum, where's Prince? Have you seen 
Prince?"
"He's here," said Mrs Jackson from the sitting room.
What was Prince doing inside the house? Martin knew something was wrong. 
When he got inside, Prince ran up to him. He seemed to think something was wrong, too. 
A man was there, having afternoon tea.
"This is Mr Goodwin," said Mrs Jackson. "He's come out from town."
"How do you do?" said Martin. Then he cried out, "You're Prince's owner! You've come 
to take him away!"
"I'm sorry, son," said the man.
"Can't we buy him, Mum? Can't we?" asked Martin.
Mr Goodwin shook his head. "I'm sorry, son, he's not for sale."
"Why did he come to see us then if he belongs to you?" asked Martin.
"I've only owned him for a little while," said the man.
"He was my brother's dog, but the family went to Australia and gave Tarla 
to me. He didn't know me very so he ran
away."
"I'll bet your brother had children, and you haven't, and that's why 
Prince ran away."
"Martin, don't be cheeky," said Mrs Jackson.
Mr Goodwin smiled. "He's quite right, Mrs Jackson. I haven't got any children, but my 
brother has. He's got a little boy like Bennie and another boy as big as Martin. I'm 
sure Tarla ran away from me to find some children."
"He chose us! He chose us!" said Noel. Without anyone noticing, the other children had 
come into the room.
Even little Bennie was there. "I find him," he said. "It was me."
And Sara smiled a big smile. "You couldn't take him away when he wanted 
to stay with us!" she said.
Mr Goodwin looked at the children.
"We could put all our money together and buy him," said Martin.
"Listen, son," said Mr Goodwin slowly, "your money wouldn't buy him. I 
wouldn't take your money, anyway. But look - I've got an idea."
Then he shouted, "Here, Tarla, Tarla!"
The dog did not move.
"Now you call him," he said to Martin.
"Hey, Prince," called Martin.
Prince ran to Martin.
Mr Goodwin smiled. "Once a dog chooses a master, no one can change his 
mind," he said. "If I take him away, he'll
come straight back to you as soon as he can. So, there's only one thing 
to do. I'll leave him here."
"Are you giving him to us?" asked Martin.
The children shouted happily.
"Please, children," said Mrs Jackson. "Mr Goodwin hasn't said he'll give 
him to you, you know-"
"Yes, I have," said Mr Goodwin. "I'll give Prince to you, but there's one 
thing you must do. He's a very special dog
and I want you to promise to look after him very well."
"Oh yes, yes!" said the children.
"I'll write down all the things you have to do, then," he said.
Then he took out a little parcel and gave it to Martin.
 "What is it?" asked Martin.
 "It's a present," said Mr Goodwin. "To thank you for
saving Prince's life when he was stuck on the fence. Your mother told me all about 
it."
 The other children crowded around.
 "Open it, open it!" they said. Even Prince had to have a look.
 Martin opened the parcel.
"What is it?" asked Bennie.
"It's the dog-collar!" said Noel.
And Prince wagged his tail very hard. He wanted to say thank you, too.

The Family Who Had Never Had a Motorcar 
by Hildegard Woodward  illustrated by Leonard Shortall

The Merry Widow was getting old, but she was still rather gay. For years, she had 
taken Dr Brown around the city to visit sick people. She waited quietly outside the 
houses, trying to flick the flies off her back with her rather short tail.
For the Merry Widow was not a lady. She was a horse - a white horse.
On Saturdays, David Brown went along and sat in the cart behind the Merry Widow, while 
his father visited the sick people.
On Sunday afternoons, the whole Brown family went for a drive in the 
cart. Little Susan sat on the seat between Doctor and Mrs Brown. Mrs Brown held Baby 
Brown on her lap and David sat on the floor and helped his father with the driving. 
And so, they drove happily along the quiet country roads.
"Come on," shouted David to the Merry Widow to make her go faster. 
Sometimes the Merry Widow went so fast she
made the dust fly.
"Dad," said David one day, "I saw a funny-looking cart go past without 
any horse at all. Do you think our cart would
go without the Merry Widow?"
"No, David," laughed Dr Brown. "That was one of those new things they 
call motorcars. It has an engine inside to
make it go."
"I don't like them," said Mrs Brown. "They should not be allowed on the streets to 
frighten our horses."
"Well, I'd rather have the Merry Widow," said Dr Brown. "She takes me where I want to 
go."
These first motorcars were always breaking down. The drivers had to get out 
and push, or get horses to pull them
home.
"What a terrible noise they make!" said Dr Brown.
"What dust and smoke!" said Mrs Brown.
"Did you know that some people are selling their horses to buy one of those 
stupid things?" said Dr Brown.
The Merry Widow hated these motorcars. One day she saw one coming and she danced down 
the road sideways, so that Dr Brown could hardly hold her.
"Sunday driving is very hard these days," said Dr Brown.
"I would rather stay at home in the garden," said Mrs Brown. "No more 
Sunday drives for me."
"Yes, dear," said Dr Brown, but he was really getting worried, for it was not only on 
Sunday that driving was hard.
"The Merry Widow won't stand still on the street any more," he said. "As soon as I go 
in to visit someone sick, one of those horrible cars comes puffing along the street 
and frightens her."
So poor, worried Dr Brown visited the sick people, never knowing what the Merry Widow 
would do next.
"I would rather have Dr Baker," said grumpy old Mrs Jones. "He comes in a fine steam 
cart and he looks at me and not at his horse."
"What shall I do?" said Dr Brown to his wife one evening.
"You could put a blanket over the Merry Widow's head," said Mrs Brown.
"Now, that's a good idea," said Dr Brown. "Then she won't see those 
stupid machines coming down the street."
So, the next day, he covered her head with a small blanket. This worked 
very well for a while. The electric and steam
motorcars went past and didn't make much noise. But very soon, along came one of those 
petrol cars. It puffed down 
the street, making a terrible noise. The
Merry Widow became so frightened that she danced up on to the footpath.
David couldn't sit in the cart any more. The Brown family were very 
unhappy. They missed their Sunday drives and
wished the good old days would come back. Dr Brown's patients began to 
leave him.
"We want a modern doctor," they said. "One who comes in a motorcar and 
thinks about his work and not about his
horse."
But the Browns still kept the Merry Widow.
"Why should we give her up?" they said. "She has been good to us for so 
many years."
Then, one day, Uncle Bill came from the country to see them. He drove up to the door 
in his new steam motorcar.
Before long, he saw how badly things were going.
"Sam," he said to Dr Brown, "you'd better get a motorcar."
"Rubbish, Bill," Dr Brown said.
"Yes, Sam," said Uncle Bill. "The horse and cart days are over."
"But what about the Merry Widow?" asked Mrs Brown.
"Well, I'll tell you," said Uncle Bill. "The Merry Widow needs a good rest and country 
air; and I am tired of having my car break down on country roads. What I need is a 
good old horse."
"Then why couldn't we swap?" asked Dr Brown.
"Samuel, my boy," said Uncle Bill. "That is just what I was about to say. A 
horse should be in the country, and a
motorcar should be in the city."
"Well, well, well," said Dr Brown. "I believe you're right, Bill. Let's go and look at 
the car anyway." 
So, the whole Brown family went out to see their funny little steam motorcar.
"It doesn't look big enough for all of us," said Mrs Brown.
"Oh yes, Mummy," said David. "I can sit in the back." 
 So, in the end, Uncle Bill drove the Merry Widow off 
 to the country, leaving his new motorcar for the Brown 
 family, who had never had one before. "It is not like driving a horse," said Dr 
Brown. 
 The car sometimes went forward when it should have
 gone back.
 "What a good driver you are now, Sammy!" said Mrs Brown from the front yard.
 "Yes, dear," said Dr Brown proudly.
 So the day came for the Brown family to go for their
 first Sunday drive. Mrs Brown and Susan put on their
 long coats and tied on their big hats. The whole family
 put on goggles to keep the dust out of their eyes, and off
 they went.
 "Not too fast, Sammy, please," said Mrs Brown.
 "Yes, dear," said Dr Brown, as the little car raced
 down the street.
 "Hold on tight," called Mrs Brown to David in the back,
 for they were going over some big holes in the street.
 The motorcar sped along the road. The dust flew,
 and the Brown family were too happy to say a word.
 Then they met a family driving in a horse and cart. 
 "See the funny old horse!" cried Susan. But when they tried to pass on the narrow 
road the poor old horse stood up on his back legs and danced sideways almost into the 
ditch. 
"What terrible things these horses are!" said Mrs Brown, after they had passed.
"They should not be allowed on the road," said Dr
Brown. "They will make Sunday driving very hard."
You see, the Brown family had never had a car 
before, but they had already forgotten about the Merry Widow.
And the Merry Widow had forgotten about them. 
On Sunday afternoons, she ate grass quietly in 
green fields. She didn't even know that the Brown family 
was happily taking a Sunday drive in one of those terrible new machines.


Ricky and Boodle 
by Barry Mitcalfe
illustrated by Graham Percy

Peter lay on his bed with nothing to do.
"What can I do, Mum?" he asked.
"The dishes," said his mother. Peter didn't want to do the dishes. But he didn't want 
to do anything else either.
"Why don't you ring up the Johnson boy?" said his mother. "He's new here and he must 
be lonely."
"But I don't know his name," said Peter.
"He seems quite a nice boy," said his mother. "He took the cakes around 
very nicely when I went to see them. It
would do you good having a boy to play with. It's not good for you to 
have nothing but pets to play with. I'm going to
ring the Johnsons this afternoon and ask that boy to come around to meet you."
So, later that day, Peter waited on the road for a boy he didn't know and didn't want 
to know. But he couldn't help thinking all the same. Would he like animals and fishing 
and all the things that Peter liked? No. He would be the kind
of boy who passed around the cakes, who had to keep his clothes clean and 
who told tales on other boys.
While Peter was thinking, Boodle, the magpie, flew down. He began to peck 
and pull to see how many knots he
could tie in Peter's shoe laces. But he pulled too hard and woke Peter up 
from his daydream.
 "Oh, you bad bird!" said Peter, and grabbed at him.
But Boodle hopped out of reach. When Boodle saw that
Peter wouldn't chase him, he dragged one wing on the
ground and began to limp away. This was the trick
Boodle liked best, but Peter knew what   would happen.
"Oh yes, and if I chase you you'll go faster and faster and then fly 
away! You won't catch me with that trick."
"Hullo! Good day! Goodbye!" called Boodle.
Peter heard a horn and a car came into sight. Boodle flew away. Peter 
waited. It was a kind of car that Peter hadn't
seen before. He forgot to look for the name when it stopped, because he 
was trying to listen to Mr and Mrs Johnson.
They were both saying, "Hello!" and, "Are you Peter?" and, "It was kind 
of you ask Ricky."
Peter couldn't think what to say, but they didn't seem to want him to say anything. 
Then they drove away and left Peter and Ricky.
Ricky didn't look the way Peter thought he would look. He was big. He had brown eyes 
and a white face, and he kept his hands on his hips as if he wasn't scared of Peter or 
anyone else.
"Mum says I've got to show you around," said Peter.
"What do you want to see?"
"Are you the only boy here?" Ricky said.
"Yes. Why?"
"I just wanted to know."
Peter thought the new boy was trying to frighten him. He didn't like him very much. He 
started to 
walk up the drive.
The new boy could come if he wanted to.
Ricky caught up with him.
"Have you ever been up north?" he asked.
"No," said Peter. "Why?"
"That's where we used to live. It's hot enough up there to fry an egg when the moon is 
full."
"Aw - the moon isn't hot."
"It is up there."
Peter looked at Ricky for a while. "What kind of car is yours?" he said.
"Don't you know? A Rolls Royce. But what's that over there?"
"Where?"
"There - on the post."
"Don't you know? It's a magpie." Peter was just going to tell Ricky it could talk, but 
Ricky picked 
up a stone and
threw it at Boodle before Peter could stop him.
Peter yelled. Boodle saw the stone. He flew into the air and let himself drop. He lay 
on the ground, 
not moving.
"Got him!" said Ricky. He thought that Boodle was dead, but Peter knew that it was one 
of the 
magpie's tricks. This
was going to be fun. It would teach Ricky a lesson.
Ricky went to pick the magpie up. Boodle turned over on to one side. Ricky tried 
again. Boodle hopped 
away. Ricky
ran after him, and off they went. Every time Ricky tried to get Boodle, Boodle just 
wasn't there. 
Boodle took Ricky through the mud, through the blackberry bushes, through the ditches, 
into the pigsty and 
out again. Ricky
was covered with mud and scratches and he was puffing hard.
After a long time, Boodle brought Ricky back over the paddock to Peter. Boodle flew on 
to Peter's 
shoulder.
"Hullo! Good day! Goodbye!" he called.
Ricky stood still. "Do you mean to say he can talk?"
"Hullo! Good day! Goodbye," said Boodle again.
"Oh, goodness! What a beaut! He was fooling me all along!" Ricky said.
"He took me through the mud, through the blackberry, through the ditches-" Ricky began 
to laugh.
"And the pigsty," said Peter.
Ricky laughed and laughed. And Peter laughed, too, because he felt so glad. Ricky and 
he were going to be friends after all.



