by Meltham Kids
By
Fishcake Publications
In association with:
Kirklees Libraries
&
Meltham Carlile Community Hub
The Golden Book of Bright Ideas, Surprising Stories and Imagination
Published by Fishcakes Publications
Huddersfield
www.fishcakepublications.com
© The Wicked Meltham Shark-like Fox Dabber Dream Writers (as individually named in the book) 2017
All Rights Reserved.
First Edition Published in Great Britain in 2017.
Title, character and place names are all protected by the applicable laws. This book is a work of fiction, therefore names, characters and events are fictitious and any resemblance to an actual person, living or dead, or any actual event is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission from copyright owners.
Introduction
This project started in back at the beginning of 2017 after a conversation with Eva O’Donovan from the Friends of Meltham Library. I am always keen to get children interested in writing and I needed somewhere that was willing to provide a place for me to do it.
The Carlile Institute, Meltham was also having a renaissance at the time and was reinventing itself into a community hub and the new location for Meltham library.
So, we thought, what a great opportunity to get the local children interested in visiting their new library and maybe creating something special along the way.
So we put out this poster…
We didn’t know what response we were going to have, but we kept our fingers crossed…and then September came around…
We were amazed, at that first workshop, to meet a group of youngsters, from 5-10 years old, who were enthusiastic, creative, excited and very entertaining.
Over the next few weeks, through a creative process of drafting and drawing, they produced a collection of short, illustrated stories all from their own imagination. This book is the product of all that hard work.
These youngsters have never been published before, never even written for a book before, but now they can hold their heads up proud and say, ‘I am a published author!’
Well done to you all.
I was very proud to be a part of this collaboration and I hope all the children featured here go on and do well in the future – maybe we will have a future novelist among them, who knows.
Keep on writing guys!
All the Best,
Martin Rothery.
Editor & Author, Fishcake Publications.
So, let me introduce to you…
We hope you enjoy the book.
Contents
John the Jumping Hero
By Amber
Wonder Girl on Tour
By Annie
The Lost Prophecy
By Bailey
Poppyrot Breaking Free
By Corinne
Party in the Park
By Ellie
Time Twisters
By Emily
Grobble Squirt
By Jack
The Story of Zzaj
By Jasmine
Green Speedy
By John
Miricle
By Rosie
Finding the Rarest Stone in the World
By Tanish
My Cats’ Day Out
By Taylor
John the Jumping Hero
By
Amber
There once was an ordinary boy called John.
But there was one thing that wasn’t very ordinary about him.
John started school when he was five-years-old, but on his sixth birthday, in the post, he got a very special birthday present from an anonymous person. He also stopped going to school – all because of the birthday present…
One morning John jumped out of the house and went into the village and everything was all normal. He went to the Hot Café and bought himself a hot chocolate. He sat down at the table and started to drink it.
Standing right near him, he saw this strange man, but he wasn’t really bothered. He kept on drinking.
Then the man suddenly shouted ‘Hi!’ really loudly making John jump and drop his cup. He had spilt his hot chocolate because he was already bouncing up and down.
After they had tidied up, this man started chatting away at him and told him his name was George.
They went outside and George told John that he was an inventor and he gave him a potion that could make him fly. John drank the potion and it made him go cloud hopping.
So, the special birthday present was…Hmm, shall I tell you? Oh, go on then…well his special birthday present was…the Jump Squiffler. What’s that? Shall I tell you? Ok, then…the Jump Squiffler is a sort of space hopper, which is, sort of special, and, sort of makes you a super hero. Ok, let’s get back to telling the story then…
When John was on the highest cloud he could hop on to, he fell off and bounced off a mountain. When he bounced off the mountain, he went so high that he banged his head on the moon and got the worst sun tan in the whole universe. He bounced off the moon, back into a cloud and floated back off into space.
John saw a Russian astronaut and even Tim Peak in the International Space Station. Luckily, one of the astronauts gave him a space suit so he could breath.
He was still flying, but ever so slowly, when an asteroid hit him and he accidentally began orbiting the Earth.
When John had finally orbited the Earth, he soon found his way back to where George was standing.
George was looking awfully confused and speechless. Luckily, he started to talk again and all he said was,’ I thought I told you how to control that thing?’
They both went down to George’s house and George showed John his latest potion inventions. George did not have a normal house at all, he didn’t just have one inventing room, he invented all around the house. His most recently invented potions were: a potion that could turn John’s Jump Squiffler into a submarine, one that could turn it into a helicopter and one that could turn the Jump Squiffler into a churn if John wanted one.
John took all the potions and went back home, saving them for disasters so he could save people.
ONE YEAR LATER
One day, John was watching the news and he noticed that they were on about Santa getting stuck up someone’s chimney near to where he lived.
So straight away John bounced off the sofa, switched off the TV and flew off in his helicopter down the road to find a family outside in a front garden; they were all out arguing and moaning. John got out of the helicopter and started calming them down.
He then jumped back in his helicopter, flew further up and saw Santa’s feet kicking about in the chimney. John put the grabber down. Luckily, he just picked Santa up and placed him gently on the floor.
Finally, he flew back home.
It was all back to normal when…the phone rang. It was George!
‘Help! I tried my latest invention, it didn’t go right, so now my house is going crazy!’
John sighed. It wasn’t back to normal after all!
Wonder Girl on Tour
By
Annie
The moment she landed, the mid-day heat was immense. For roughly nine hours and twenty seven minutes, Holly-Mae Rose had been on a small, stuffy plane full of crying babies and snoring men.
She q
uickly jumped out of the plane and into the balmy LA weather. Whoosh! The warm summer breeze blew Holly-Mae off her feet.
Eventually, Holly-Mae arrived at her hotel in a sparkling stretch Limo. She was extremely jet-lagged, but she decided to go to the shops and stroll down the LA walk of Fame carrying all of her shopping bags filled with the latest fashions and trends. She was exhausted, so she went to the toilets, put on her new swimming costume and went to the beach.
Holly-Mae was relaxing on a sun bed, in the sun, with her new sunglasses on, when she suddenly saw someone drowning and screeching for help. She was the kind of person who would try to do something about this, so she jumped up off of her sun bed, swam into the sea, grabbed the poor drowning girl and pulled her back to shore.
‘Thank you so much for saving me just then,’ exclaimed the beautiful little girl.
By that time, Holly-Mae had realised she had something special and so she decided to do something about it.
Soon after, Wonder Girl (as she had now become known) had found out she had powers to save people, she decided to travel the world to make it a better place.
First, she heard about an earthquake in New Zealand, then, a fire in Australia, then a penguin stuck in a hole in Antarctica and finally a car crash in England. She quickly took flight and began the next chapter of her life as a busy superhero…
The Lost Prophecy
By
Bailey
It was a dark and stormy night…just kidding – this is a comedy you silly little time-twiddler!
I am a bee, very different from others by name (Umper-Loompa Jeff) and looks, because I am a rainbow, funny and adventurous bee.
I remember now, ten years ago, every bee was called to the main honeycomb to be told terrible news.
‘Our beloved prophecy has gone missing!’ the Judge Bee screamed.
Still, to this day, the prophecy is missing – so I am going to find it all by myself!
So my journey begins…
Jeff packed his stuff (thinking this was going to be easy) and then started to have doubts and thoughts. But he looked out of the window and saw all the black, white and grey unhappy bees of the hive and thought to himself, ‘I can do this! The hive is depending on me!’
It was a long trek along the colourless road.
‘The world has no colour without the prophecy!’ he shouted to no one, in the middle of nowhere.
Suddenly, his vision blurred and, when it came back into focus, he noticed the only thing in colour…a cave…a multicoloured cave…
That was when he met the turtle – the protector of everything.
‘Go get me a LOL flower, they have purple petals and green everywhere else.’
To Jeff’s surprise, there were two outside the cave, so he picked them and went back in.
Jeff found the turtle again and gave him the flowers. The turtle seemed happy and let him go past and there, in front of him, was the prophecy. He opened it!
Everything suddenly turned white…then a very old bee appeared and came to Jeff and said in a dramatic voice, ‘Jeff, well done for finding me. I always knew you would.’
Jeff, sounding confused, said, ‘How…do…you…know me?’
The old bee replied, ‘I’m your dad!’
Jeff could not think of anything to say…
When they arrived home, there was a big parade in honour of him and his dad (John Cena).
John was supposed to be king, but he was so grateful he gave his crown to Jeff, so Jeff became king instead.
Jeff gave his first order, ‘ENJOY LIFE NOW!’
Colour came back to the hive, and fun, and laughter, and honey too.
Poppyrot Breaking Free
By
Corrine
Poppyrot was in her kennel feeling sad and lonely. She had no one to play with.
Then Zahara came home from school and walked straight past Poppyrot’s kennel. Poppyrot was hopeful for love and attention.
Zahara turned to Poppyrot and said in an angry voice, ‘WHAT?’
Poppyrot walked backwards a bit and curled up into a ball.
Meanwhile, Zahara stomped into the house and threw her bag onto the floor and, with her muddy shoes, stormed up into her bedroom leaving muddy footprints everywhere.
Whilst nobody was watching, Poppyrot decided to break free. She just felt like she wasn’t loved or appreciated and just had to get out of there.
After a while, Zahara realised that Poppyrot wasn’t there. She told her parents and they went out looking for five days to see if they could find her. The family were feeling angry but, as the days passed, they got more worried and scared that they would never see Poppyrot again.
After another worrying five days, the family found her in the woods and felt relief; they couldn’t wait to get her back home. Poppyrot was dirty, but happy. They took her lead and led her home. They gave her a big bone and sat down with her on the sofa, relieved and happy that they had found her.
Days later, the family were still being nice to Poppyrot and whenever Zahara came home she would give her a dog treat. Then she asked her parents for another dog so Poppyrot would have someone to play with.
They all lived happily ever after.
Party in the Park
By
Ellie
It was the first day of the party in the park on Ooggle Blob where Jumbly Eye Jane lives.
Jane was at the play centre finishing her snozzberries. This was her favourite food in the whole world, well, apart from strawberries, burgers, tuna sandwiches, ham sandwiches, ice cream, strawberry milkshake, chocolate cake, fizzlecrump juice and…well anything she could eat and drink really.
It was time to go to the party, so Jane skipped all the way across the road and into the park.
There she met John and Ellie, who were waiting for her. John and Ellie were her friends and they’d brought all their cats and dogs along to the party as well.
The party had lots of delicious food and all Jane’s favourites were there too…including snozzberries. She was really excited.
At once, they all spotted the melon and dived right in – including the cats and dogs!
But soon, the cats and dogs all got really bad hiccups as they’d eaten too much melon. They all hiccupped so much, they all got headaches.
Then, the band started to play, a song called ‘AbHeVmNeJocimVAe’. It was really loud and made their headaches worse.
John and Ellie ran away from Jane and left her stood on her own.
Jane began to cry. She decided to go home and eat her favourite buns with a flower on top to make her feel better.
Jane went to bed and closed her eyes and dreamed of fun times at the fair which was visiting the park in a few weeks. But that would be another adventure…hopefully that would be more fun.
Time Twisters
By
Emily
Topaz is a gentle, young, girl fairy from Gemtopia who loves nothing more than playing with her sisters, Diamond and Amethyst.
One day, they were playing together as usual in the palace garden. They were in the palace garden because they were princesses. That day, they were playing with their magic, creating gems and fires, when Topaz shot a beam of topazes into Emerald’s green fires…a portal appeared.
The portal pulsated with a golden light.
Emerald asked Topaz, ‘Aren’t you going to go through?’
So, without replying, Topaz quietly entered the portal. There was a swirl of multicoloured light before she stumbled into a dark room.
‘Huh? Who’s there?’ a voice shouted from the darkness.
Topaz could see a faint outline coming from the gloom. Aided by the gentle glow of the portal, Topaz could see a black haired lady, in a black dress, approaching her.
‘Who…who are you?’ Topaz stuttered.
‘I’m The Doctor, who are you?’ The Doctor snapped.
‘I’m T…T…Topaz,’ she mumbled.
‘Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!’ A l
oud, robotic voice echoed around the room.
‘It’s ok, TroggleHumperBot!’ The Doctor shouted. ‘Lights on!’ she added.
‘Why is the room shaking?’ Topaz asked.
‘We’re landing,’ The Doctor replied.
‘Where?’ Topaz wondered.
‘It’s Sinnoh,’ laughed The Doctor.
TroggleHumperBot flung the doors open, only for a young boy to come sprinting in, crashing straight into the centre console. ‘Ow, my head,’ he groaned.
‘Are you ok?’ Topaz panicked.
‘I’m fine,’ the boy replied. ‘I’m Ash, by the way, who are you?’
‘I’m Topaz and this is The Doctor. Why are you in such a rush?’
‘The nasty Team Rocket took my Pikachu, but a girl named Dawn found him, so I’m looking for her.’
