by Georgia Byng
Gaarder weaves a clever web here: Sophie’s story keeps you turning the pages and the riddle of what is going on keeps you hooked. While you’re at it Gaarder feeds you the history of philosophy, weaving life’s big questions into Sophie’s story so that all her experiences are relevant to the ideas being discussed. The result is a very thought-provoking, stimulating read, and you finish it feeling more intelligent than when you started!
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling I still marvel at how Rowling took an old idea that so many had tried to breathe life into and worked wonders with it. I really enjoyed discovering her world of magic and I liked her original, clever take on how things really work in the world of witches and wizards. A pleasure from start to finish.
A note from Petoola
MOSS HUMMUNS R so stupid that thay don’t reelize that cleva dogs, like myeself, can tttype. Hear I am siting at Molly’s tipe riter. I’m nooot saying it’s easy, it reelly isn’t—as you can see I hav alrudy made wun spellin mistake but sew would you if you had paws lik mine and had to stab at eech key with an claw. Wich reminds me I reelly must get to the pooodel parla. The one in Brirsville isnot the best in the werld but there is a luvly collie there called Shakespeare hoo I ulways hav a good chin wag with. And a tale wag too. He ulways nos egsactly what’s been gowing on in town. And of corse I need updating becus thes days I ulways seem to be awuy. I missed the anual Brirsville dog show, wich Shakespeare organized, and there was The Big Eet competishun too. Bertie the bootcher’s dog won that. Evryone thinks Bertee is so lucky as he gets fyne meet evry nite.
I must say, life has changed since Molly and Rockkee cam proparly into my life. I feel like the luckyast pug in the werld. Of corse you pugs reeding this will feel that yoo are the luckyast pugs in the werld too, and I’m not saying your pets arenot nise but you no how it is. You ulways think your own pet is the best.
I’m glad to be abel to be heer to tipe this as I have had qite a few close shavs as thay say and I don’t meen fer shavs, my fer is short enuf. I must say Molly dus pick em. Her advunturs I meen. And sum of the things we hav had to do!@£$%^&*()_+ (that is good fun dooing that on the tiperiter) First it was Nokman, and he had me in that filfy van and then that dingee bak room where I had to pee inside. I neerly died becus he didnot feed me or give me water. I sumetimes wonder how I manajed to forgiv him. Well he’s a harmles old fello now ulthow I do think he smells a bit. And then thare was holywood caling me. I cood have been a huje name. But who needs that balony? A slise of balony is nise but who wants it for brekfast, lunch, and tee? Wun moovie was enough for me. O the times I’ve beeen thru. And what abowt what happened in India? O I forgot, Molly hasn’t finisht werking on that wun yet. It was veree scaree. The werse yet. So scary. With a orrible scaly man thare hoo sed evrything back to frunt. Frack to bunt. He was so big I neva seen a persan sew big. I ulmost went bald from the shok of it. Shakespeare wood hav bean suprizd when I next went to the parla!@£$%^&*()_+!
Mollee has a helpa—a perzan she gos to hoo rites her storees down for her for you to reed—well I fink har helpa has neerlee finushed the storree of our Indian adventa. Did I say it all hapunned in Indya? Well it did and whut an udvunture it wus! And whut smels thare wer thare. All you dogs owt thare hav got to go to Indya if eva yoo get thu chunce.
Now I betta go or I will miss having a snuggel wiv Mollee befor she gos to bed.
Love to all of yoo dogs reeding this and to any peepel hoo r reeding too.
If thare r anee cats reeding, wutch owt thares a dog behind yoo. Only jjoking. Haa haa!@£$%^&*()_
WOOOOFFFPHPHH … that meens goodbuy in dog. Best wushes from yor frend—if yore the sort of person I lik—
Petoola
A Few Hypnotic Tips from Molly Moon
HELLO, EVERYBODY OUT there—This is me, Molly Moon.
I’ve decided to drop you a quick note because everyone else seems to be doing it and also I’d like to make contact.
First of all I hope you like the author who I chose to write my memoirs.
I almost didn’t get around to recording my life but it has turned out so extraordinary that I eventually realized I should write it down for posterity and for you to read. I bumped into Georgia Byng in Briersville, where there was a Literary Festival … you know the sort of thing—it’s where the writers come and talk to people about their books and how they write. Well, I got into a conversation with Georgia about my life and she thought it would work best told as a novel, instead of a memoir. She said it would sound more suspenseful that way. I thought that this sounded brilliant.
I also hoped that a few books about my life might bring some other time-stopping hypnotists out into the daylight, although the likelihood of this is slim as timestopping hypnotists are sadly almost extinct.
However, out of the hundreds of thousands of children all over the world who read these books (which have been published in America, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Finland, Latvia, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Romania, Lithuania, Croatia, Poland, Russia, Spain, the Basque Country, Catalonia, Portugal, Hungary, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, and China), there may be a few plain hypnotists. So, here off the top of my head are a few hypnotic tips.
1. Always be aware of where you hypnotize people. I could write a long list of where you should be careful of hypnotizing people, but I’ll just write a short one and you should get the idea. Be careful of hypnotizing underwater. The refraction of the water can do funny things to your hypnotic eye glare and people can think they’re hypnotized by the water and not by you. When they think they’re hypnotized by the water, it’s really tricky as they do all sorts of weird things. They want to sleep in the water for instance and they want to keep drinking it. They go into water nymph mode and it can be really embarrassing for them. Be careful hypnotizing people near water, too. I hypnotized a big woman in the swimming pool in Los Angeles because she was saying how much she needed to do some exercise, but couldn’t be bothered. I thought I’d do her a favor and make exercise really easy for her. But when I hypnotized her she fell over backwards and her head went under. It was terrible—she nearly drowned. Rocky had to help pull her out and we had to put her into the lifesaving position. Boy! Was she heavy! Her makeup had smudged all over her face and she coughed up a bucket of water. At least she survived. But, phew, that gave me a shock.
Similarly if you hypnotize people through the flames of a fire, the eye glare gets distorted and this can be really dangerous. People hypnotized by fire want to get into the fire, so they get barbecued. I have luckily never had this happen to anyone.
Yes, you must be really careful of where people are when you hypnotize them. I would never hypnotize someone who was standing on the edge of a cliff or by a busy road—you never know if they’re going to react strangely and move when you first hypnotize them—step backwards off the cliff or into the traffic—that sort of thing. You do not want fatalities.
2. Be careful of who you are hypnotizing: Be careful of hypnotizing drivers when they’re driving, and pilots of planes or helicopters and captains of ships, etc.
Be careful of hypnotizing people holding dangerous things (i.e. butchers holding knives, guards holding fierce dogs, police holding guns, old ladies holding umbrellas or heavy handbags). Of course, sometimes you will just have to hypnotize on the spot, but just beware that if you do it wrong, the weapon they are holding can be used against you.
3. Hypnotizing animals: Obviously this is great fun, but just be careful as animals with teeth can be very scary if they aren’t hypnotized properly. It is lovely, though, to hypnotize panthers and make them cuddly. You can hypnotize elephants to do dog tricks and mice to run in circles or climb into match boxes. When you hypnotize animals you just have to work out a way of explaining what you want them to do and this really comes down to your imagination.
4. Rem
ember that you probably don’t want a lot of attention if you are hypnotizing people, so don’t ask them to scream at the top of their voices or do something that will get them arrested. To be a responsible hypnotist you should always make sure that you are around to bring a person out of the trance you put them in. If they are miles away in a police station cell you can’t get to them … unless you hypnotize the police, too. Generally, though, you don’t want to make people do things that make them get into trouble as this is not very nice … (unless of course they deserve a bit of a punishment like Adderstone did).
I have found that hypnotism is best when it’s used to help people. It’s brilliant for curing bad habits like smoking, overeating, fear of flying, fear of making friends, that sort of thing. And as a hypnotist it always feels so nice to be useful like this.
And don’t forget that you can also hypnotize yourself.
I like the hypnotic saying that goes “Every day in every way I get better and better and better.” It’s amazing, if you say this to yourself, your life really does start to get better. It’s called “positive affirmation” and it is a fantastic hypnotic tip to help YOuRSELF.
The other thing that is nice to say to yourself is, “Ban bad thoughts from your head and only think of the good things.” It’s really good to do this as nasty thoughts, like worries and things you don’t like, can spoil your day. So I often hypnotize myself to focus on the GOOD THINGS.
So HAPPY HYPNOTISING!
Love from,
Molly
P.S. By the way, that letter from Petula was not from Petula at all. Rocky wrote it because he’s the creative type and because he thought Petula would like a word with you all if she could.
P.P.S. Rocky says hi.
Some Writing Tips from Georgia
You can write, too.
Please, please don’t think that you are not a writer.
I am a firm believer that everyone has a writer in them.
You must not think that your ideas are rubbish.
If you’ve ever had a mad, exciting dream full of drama, tension, and feeling, with an array of characters in it, well, that is the writer in you coming out.
To write, you need to be a noticer of things.
To notice things you have to open your eyes and ears and then, when you’ve noticed the thing, have a part of your brain where you slot that noticed thing away.
You also need to have a good imagination.
To have a good imagination, you must never stamp on your imagination. Your imagination is like a crazy part of your brain that can often be ridiculous with its ideas. It makes odd leaps and bounds. It can suggest things to you at very inappropriate moments. But don’t cuff its ears and tell it to stop, because if you do, it will shrivel up. Once it has shriveled up, it is very difficult to bring back to life. Just think of all those sad grown-ups you’ve met who look like the world bores them to tears. Well, there’s a good chance their imaginations are like tiny gray shy creatures inside them, instead of being big, bubbling, and wonderful. A good imagination is a great help through life. All children are born with wonderful imaginations. Please look after yours and take good care of it.
Lastly, you need to have some sort of control over language so that you can use the right words to really get your message across.
To control language you have to practice talking, telling stories, and writing stories, letters, and poems. Language is fantastuubulous stuff.
To write a story …
Try to imagine the whole story in your head before you start. Take five minutes doing this, or five months. You can lie on your bed with your story running through your mind like a film you’ve watched. Rewind it and play it again and again. Experiment and make it as complete as you can. Get to know its parts before you start—its characters, places, and the drama that happens.
Before I wrote anything very long, I wrote comic strips. This was a good discipline as the comic strips I did had to fit into twenty four pages. I had very little space to tell my story. That meant that I had to be very choosy about what I wrote in the comic strip. I had to get the characters across in as concentrated a way as possible and I had to only allow a certain amount of space for each part of the story. It was a very good way to start writing because sometimes, if you are not a confident writer, it is easier to draw what you want your reader to see. Eventually you might say, “Hey, I don’t need to draw pictures anymore, I can describe that picture in words.”
There are quite a few writers who started off writing in comic strip form who now write really, really long books. Comic strips are a brilliant thing and an art form and can help you learn to write.
HERE ARE SOME ideas to get your imaginations bubbling. If they grab you, why not write a twenty-four page comic strip, or a twenty-four page story in words? Or both!
The Boy Who Found He Could Stop Time
The Hypnotic Plant
The Hypnotist Dog
The Day My Mother Turned into a Monkey
The Week I Could Have Anything I Wanted
Remember, think up a story that interests YOU, not one that you think will interest other people. Have faith in your ideas. And HAVE FUN. If you are not enjoying the story, change it to something that you do enjoy thinking about. Jeepers, you don’t want to write something that bores you! Write something to entertain YOURSELF.
MAY
BRILLIANT IDEAS
COME WHIZZING OUT OF THE INSIDE OF YOUR HEAD
AND
GOOD LUCK.
An Excerpt from Book Three: Molly Moon’s Incredible Time Travel Adventure
Rocky pursed his lips.
“You’d better watch out, Molly. Be on your guard.”
Rocky never exaggerated. He was also hard to panic. So getting a warning like this from him made Molly shudder. She gripped his arm.
“Don’t you do your usual thing and go wandering off,” she whispered. “This house is beginning to give me the spooks.”
“Oh, come on, Molly, there’s nothing spooky about this place. It’s cool. It’s not like a haunted house. It’s got radiators, new carpets, and a screen to watch movies on.”
“Rocky don’t say that word.”
“What, ‘screen’?”
“No. Haunted.”
“Molly what are you talking about? You don’t believe in ghosts—we’ve talked about them so many times—they’re just figments of peoples’ imaginations. What we’ve got to watch out for is somebody real. Someone real stole Petula.”
Rocky started to walk away.
“Where are you going? Can I come?”
“If you want to come into the toilet with me. Where is it by the way? Down that blue passage or in that entrance where the stuffed animal-heads are?”
“The nearest is underneath the bison head. I’ll show you.”
The section of hall beside the front door was a strange place. Its walls were covered with animal trophies. Their glassy eyes stared out from the walls. And mixed among them were examples of antique garden shears—another collection that had once been mad Cornelius Logan’s.
“Are you sure Cornelius is still harmless?”
“Oh, Molly, he definitely is. You saw him galloping around on the lawn. Thinks he’s a lamb. When are you going to get these dead animals out of here?”
“I keep meaning to do it. Maybe we should organize that today.”
As Molly waited for Rocky, she began walking around the hall table, inspecting iridescent peacock feathers that stood in a vase. At every corner of the table, a different group of animals glared down at her as if she was responsible for their deaths. Suddenly, her mind imagined Petula’s head stuffed and staring down, stiff and rigor mortised. She felt faint.
Molly remembered some old wives’ tale that peacock feathers in a house brought bad luck. So, seizing the whole bunch of long feathers, she pulled them out of their pot and headed for the front door. If Petula’s kidnapper was there, she’d thrash him with them. She’d attack from behind and pull h
im down to the ground, strangling him with her arms until he told her how to get Petula back. She flung the door open.
Cold air flooded inside. Molly stepped out into the morning sunshine and down the front steps of the house.
A distant lawn mower droned as it dealt with the winter grass. Light bounced off the place where Molly had last seen Petula, and then, as she walked across the circle of gravel, past the bush sculpture of a flying magpie, a cloud made a giant shadow over the grounds of Briersville Park.
Something flickered in the periphery of Molly’s vision. Something bluish. She turned quickly, but there was nothing there. It must have been a bird, or the shadow of a bird. Or maybe it was that turbaned thief. Molly pivoted one hundred and eighty degrees. If he were loitering nearby, she’d catch him creeping up on her. The white columns on the front portico of the house stood like guards and the windows were like watchmen, but Molly knew that out here in the wind, she was very vulnerable.
Again a blue shadow flickered to her left. Molly didn’t turn this time. She tried to see what it was without looking. It hovered, then disappeared. Thirty seconds later it appeared again to her right. Was it a ghost? Maybe ghosts were real. A poltergeist was a ghost that was able to move things. Had it moved Petula? Molly was determined to find out. Although she was filthy scared, she let the shadow flicker to the left, then again to the right. She stood stock-still. Once more it was there—closer, and then again on the right of her, closer. Nearer and nearer it got. Right … left … right…. There it was to the left … the right … the left. Left, right, left. Molly was so intent upon winkling out the truth, that she didn’t feel herself falling. Falling into a hypnotic trap. So that when the purple-turbaned man was standing finally in front of her, she just gazed straight into the dark holes of his eyes. She didn’t question his strange Indian attire—the dark blue, dresslike outfit he had on that flared down to below his knees, tied at the waist with a silken cummerbund, the tight white leggings that he wore underneath, or the scooped, pointed red moccasins on his feet. She simply drank in his appearance, as calmly as if she were looking at a picture in a book. She registered the handlebar mustache that swooped up on either side of his wrinkled face all whiskery below his ears. She noted his crooked orange teeth, and that he was chewing something. She observed the golden chain that hung around his neck with three crystals hanging there—a clear, a green, and a red crystal. Molly relaxed completely, dropped her peacock feathers, and stood still and silent in a hypnotic daze.
