E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 288 Seiten
Foxlee The Wrath of the Woolington Wyrm
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-78269-414-4
Verlag: Pushkin Children's Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 288 Seiten
Reihe: Miss Mary-Kate Martin's Guide to Monsters
ISBN: 978-1-78269-414-4
Verlag: Pushkin Children's Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Karen Foxlee is an Australian author who writes for both children and young adults. She grew up in the Australian mining town Mount Isa and still frequently dreams she is walking barefoot along the dry Leichhardt River. She is the author of Dragon Skin and the Carnegie Medal-longlisted Lenny's Book of Everything, both published by Pushkin Children's Books. The first book of the Miss Mary-Kate Martin's Guide to Monsters, The Wrath of the Woolington Wyrm, was a Foyles Children's Book of the Month.
Weitere Infos & Material
Miss Mary-Kate Martin chose from her lucky items collection carefully. First, she chose the lucky silver packet that contained the last seven pieces of gum that her father had left behind before he disappeared on Mount Shishapangma when she was five. She placed it carefully at the bottom of her suitcase.
She also chose the lucky novelty torch shaped like Big Ben and her lucky stress ball, which was a miniature world globe. It didn’t seem nearly enough lucky things for a train trip to somewhere she’d never been, so she added her lucky international coin collection that contained thirty-three coins in a small glass jar.
‘Make sure you pack sensible shoes,’ her mother, Professor Martin, called from her bedroom.
Mary-Kate looked down at the red sparkly shoes she was wearing.
‘Yes, Prof,’ she said. Prof was what Mary-Kate called her mother.
Mary-Kate’s dress and hair bow were black. Her shoes were red and so was her backpack. Both of them were sparkly. It was all perfectly coordinated, with exactly the right proportions of sparkle and colour. It made her feel good. If she changed the shoe colour it would mess things up. She’d be only twenty-five per cent sparkle. She’d begin to worry. She’d worry that by not wearing matching clothes something would happen. Something terrible. Like a train crash. Or an avalanche. Or an avalanche onto a train travelling through a mountain tunnel. Especially the train she was going to travel on that morning. Although she doubted there were any mountains or snow on the way to Woolington Well, she couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure, so she packed her favourite lucky oversized handkerchief as well.
Many things set off these types of thoughts:
- Brown colouring-in pencils
- Beginnings and endings
- Facing backwards on trains
- Saying the wrong thing during small talk
- And sudden changes.
That morning had been filled with change.
‘Archaeological digs require sensible shoes,’ said Professor Martin, coming to stand at the door. She was wearing her sensible tan trousers, brown boots and brown utility jacket. Brown was a problem for Mary-Kate, but at least all the colours matched. ‘Are you feeling anxious?’
She sat on Mary-Kate’s bed and looked at the pile of lucky things in the suitcase.
‘No,’ lied Mary-Kate.
‘I think it will be fun to have you along on a work trip with me. And exciting! I’ve heard it’s a darling little village and you will have lots to explore.’
‘What about my geography project? It’s due on Wednesday,’ said Mary-Kate, hopefully. Maybe she could stay at home alone. It was only two nights.
‘You can do it on the train.’ Professor Martin smiled.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to go with you,’ said Mary-Kate, picking up her lucky stress ball and giving it a forceful squish. ‘It’s just, well …’
‘A bit out of the ordinary?’
Professor Martin was always catching trains and planes to faraway places for archaeological work. Mary-Kate had never been with her before.
‘I’m used to staying with Granny,’ Mary-Kate said apologetically.
‘I know. But Granny is on one of her bus trips; you know how she loves them. So, it hasn’t worked out this time.’
Besides her mother, Mary-Kate’s granny was her favourite person in the world, even if she wore colourful mismatched clothes. Granny loved spicy international cuisine and when Professor Martin was away, she ordered takeaway and let Mary-Kate stay up late to watch the shopping channel, which Mary-Kate found soothing. They would go for long walks together around the park, side by side, comfortably silent.
Lately, though, Granny had discovered bus trips. She’d been to Scotland and then to Stonehenge, and now she was going in the Channel Tunnel to Paris. She seemed to be forever packing up her zebra-print suitcase with floral scarves and leopard-print tracksuits and heading out the front door.
Mary-Kate squished her globe stress ball again.
‘It will be fun, Mary-Kate. A few days off school. I know it’s been tricky for you there lately,’ said Professor Martin kindly.
‘Tricky’ was not the word Mary-Kate would have used to describe how she’d been feeling at her school, Bartley Towers. If she used the H scale of how Horrid it had been there lately, she would be registering a triple H. Some days were one H days. Horrible. Others were double H days. Horrible and Horrendous. Lately they’d been triple H days. Horrible, Horrendous and Hideous.
La-la-la, she said to herself, because this sometimes helped to get rid of bad thoughts. She squeezed the globe stress ball extra hard.
‘Why don’t you pack some sensible clothes, Mary-Kate?’ said Professor Martin, hopefully. ‘And remember to pack your lucky stress ball too.’
Mary-Kate’s mother went back to her own packing. Mary-Kate knew the Professor’s hard-shell suitcase would contain nothing but sensible clothes in shades of brown. There would also be lots of digging tools, torches, brushes and special sprays. Professor Martin had been going away on archaeological digs for as long as Mary-Kate could remember and she’d watched her pack many times.
Mary-Kate looked wistfully at the lucky items she’d packed and added her second-favourite lucky oversized handkerchief as well. Into her backpack she placed her geography homework, her unused strawberry-scented notebook and unopened glitter pens, and her mobile phone. She placed her lucky stress ball on top. She’d need it on the train.
‘Are you nearly ready?’ called Professor Martin. ‘The taxi will be here any minute.’
On the train, Mary-Kate was glad that her seat faced forwards. She tried not to think about the fact that she was going on a work trip with her mother to a place she didn’t know. The only place they’d travelled to together was their annual holiday to the seaside. Each year they went to the exact same hotel with Granny and ate the exact same breakfasts and dinners, and played the exact same games of cards at night. Mary-Kate closed her eyes and wished that this was where they were going. Perhaps if she kept her eyes closed long enough that could actually happen? A whole season could pass, and she’d open her eyes and it would be summer and there would be Granny eating crisps and playing solitaire on her phone as familiar countryside whizzed past.
‘Perhaps you could do your project?’ suggested Professor Martin, who always knew when Mary-Kate was anxious.
‘That might help,’ said Mary-Kate, taking out her homework notebook and her pens.
Only it didn’t.
It was the pens that were the trouble.
Twelve glitter pens in a plastic case, unopened.
Back in the safety of her bedroom with all her lucky things packed, she’d added the pens, thinking, This is definitely the kind of day that I will be able to open my pens. Number 1: I will have no choice. I have no other pens packed. Number 2: Today feels like a pen packet-opening day.
Here on the train, she held them in her lap unopened.
They looked so perfectly pristine nestled in their clear plastic case. Once she opened them, they’d never be perfect again.
Mary-Kate, you have trouble with beginnings and endings, her granny always said kindly, but you’re very good with in-betweens. Mary-Kate took a deep breath and closed her eyes again. Maybe she could just keep them closed for the rest of the day.
‘Mary-Kate,’ said Professor Martin, who’d looked up from the Archaeology Monthly magazine she was reading. ‘I know you can do this.’
Mary-Kate opened her eyes.
Did her mother mean go on an unexpected archaeology trip, or open the pens? Or something else? Professor Martin had the determined gleam in her eyes that she often wore. She was a strong woman, always disappearing on adventures to strange locations: jungles and deserts and remote mountain ranges. Mary-Kate wished she was like her mother.
The Professor must mean the pens.
‘Yes, I know I can,’ Mary-Kate said and tried to add that same determined glint to her eyes as she opened the pens with a small click. The train did not suddenly crash. London, grey and miserable, kept sliding past the windows in a blur.
The geography project was to draw and name the peaks of the Swiss Alps. The Swiss Alps were very jagged in the image Mary-Kate had copied from her mobile phone, so she attempted to make them look a little neater, rounding off the pointiest parts. She coloured them in purple and yellow because those were complementary colours. Outside, the grey city gave way to green fields. The train rushed through the...
