E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 304 Seiten
Foxlee The Trouble with the Two-Headed Hydra
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-78269-416-8
Verlag: Pushkin Children's Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 304 Seiten
Reihe: Miss Mary-Kate Martin's Guide to Monsters
ISBN: 978-1-78269-416-8
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
Mary-Kate stared at her outfit in the mirror. Brand new sparkly red shoes, blue shorts and a blue and white striped T-shirt. She wondered what she needed to balance the stripes. Her red sparkly backpack had helped, but she needed something else. She sighed and looked through her bow box. A bow was definitely what she needed. A red bow or a blue bow, or preferably a navy bow patterned with small white anchors. Although she knew she didn’t own such a bow, she searched anyway.
She placed a plain navy bow in her long brown hair and sighed again. Mary-Kate had tried very hard to create a seaside theme because she knew it would make her feel better. If everything in her suitcase matched, nothing terrible could possibly happen, only she didn’t own nearly enough nautical type clothes. Professor Martin, Granny and Mary-Kate only went once a year to Scarborough and that wasn’t really the same as the Greek Islands. Just thinking the words Greek Islands made her stomach begin to churn with butterflies. The Greek Islands were far, far away. There was deep ocean and tall mountains in-between with the potential for great calamities. Avalanches maybe. Quite possibly volcanoes.
Thinking volcanoes made her go straight to her lucky items collection, which was stored neatly on the top shelf of her bookstand. She took her lucky silver packet of chewing gum that contained the last six pieces of gum her father had left behind before he disappeared on Mount Shishapangma when she was five. She placed it in her shorts pocket. She took her lucky international coin collection containing thirty-three coins in its new jar and placed it in her backpack. She touched the old jar, which now held Woolington Wyrm slime. It was brown and glittered slightly. Even though she shuddered at the sight of it, a strange thrill of excitement coursed through her and her breath caught in her throat.
‘La-la-la,’ she said aloud so she would stop thinking about that adventure. She continued to sift through her collection. She would definitely need her lucky Big Ben-shaped novelty torch, she decided. She probably should also take her lucky backup torch in case her first lucky torch’s batteries ran out. She chose the little novelty LED torch shaped like a turtle that her granny had brought back from the Orkney Islands. She wondered if she should bring a third torch in case both torches failed.
‘I do not need three torches,’ she said firmly aloud. ‘Two torches is a perfectly lucky number.’
Mary-Kate was almost certain though, that she should take the miniature music box that played ‘Swan Lake’. She quickly placed these items into her backpack, followed by her lucky protractor and compass set. She took a deep breath, picked up her lucky world globe stress ball and squished it hard, then added it to the pile. She placed her strawberry-scented notebook and her glitter pens in their plastic case on top. Finally, she opened the top dresser drawer and retrieved something that she’d only recently acquired. It was a star-shaped medal attached to an old striped ribbon. The colours were magenta, blue and green. She slipped it into her pocket beside the chewing gum.
‘Just in case,’ she murmured.
‘Mary-Kate,’ called her mother, Professor Martin. ‘Could you bring your suitcase through to the front door? The driver will be here in a minute. And then run upstairs to say goodbye to Granny. Don’t forget to pack your bathers.’
‘Okay,’ called Mary-Kate, glancing at her hideously patterned bathers that lay draped over the chair. She was a good swimmer but her bathers were green and decorated with cats in boats. Her granny had bought them for her.
‘Patterns are good,’ her granny sometimes said when she came downstairs in a floral skirt and a striped shirt and an emerald-green overcoat. She liked to smile at Mary-Kate to see if she’d disagree. Mary-Kate loved her granny, even with clashing patterns, although sometimes her outfits were so brightly mismatched that Mary-Kate had to look away and hope that a disaster wouldn’t happen. It wasn’t just mismatched clothes that set off these thoughts of disaster, though. Many things could.
For instance:
- Brown colouring-in pencils
- Beginnings and endings
- Facing backwards on trains
- Saying the wrong thing during small talk
- Or sudden changes.
And there had been a rather large sudden change in the Martin household since the phone rang late last night. Professor Martin had been summoned to an important find at an archaeological dig site on a remote Greek Island. She’d come into the sitting room where Granny and Mary-Kate had been watching the shopping channel and informed Mary-Kate that she’d be coming on the trip as well.
‘Me?’ Mary-Kate had gasped. She hadn’t long returned from Woolington Well with the Professor, and the adventure she’d had there still filled her head with a mix of dread, confusion and strange fluttery excitement.
‘Oh, the Greek Islands are simply wonderful. You’ll love it, Mary-Kate,’ cried Granny. ‘What’s the find, dear?’
‘A wonderful tiled floor unearthed in the expansion of a sardine processing plant. Apparently, it shows some type of sea creature,’ said the Professor.
‘C-creature,’ Mary-Kate had stammered. She’d been looking forward to her term holidays from her school Bartley Towers, time spent with Granny and the soothing sounds of the shopping channel.
‘It’s made of tile, darling, it should be safe.’ Granny smiled. ‘Oh, how wonderful, a visit to a Greek Island. If only I hadn’t had that small accident on my bus tour to Birmingham, I’d have come along too.’
Granny had sprained her ankle and was confined to her bed or a chair for a week.
‘Creature,’ whispered Mary-Kate now, in her room. She glanced at the Woolington Wyrm slime jar on her lucky things shelf. In Woolington Well she’d met Arabella Woolington and together they’d crawled through muddy tunnels and met a giant fire-breathing wyrm. They’d solved a mystery and helped a monster and saved a village. She’d done things that she never, ever would have thought herself capable of.
Mary-Kate deliberately left the bathers where they were and zipped up her suitcase.
Surely nothing like that could EVER happen again.
Upstairs, Granny was reading a book near the window. Granny had a very large library, shelves stretching from floor to ceiling, and nearly all of the books were romance novels. A fluffy and rather old ginger cat slept curled beside her. Outside it was raining.
‘At least it will be sunny where you’re going,’ said Granny cheerfully, patting the cat. Her bandaged leg was up on some cushions and she wore a zebra-patterned dressing-gown and fluffy green slippers.
‘I wish I could stay and look after you,’ said Mary-Kate. ‘I don’t even know why I have to go with Prof.’
Prof was what Mary-Kate called her mother.
‘I think she quite enjoyed you tagging along last time, didn’t she?’ said Granny, smiling. She had purple-tinged hair and always wore pink lipstick. Despite all her mismatching bits, Mary-Kate loved her granny very much. She’d helped raise Mary-Kate since her father disappeared all those years ago.
‘She said you were very brave,’ added Granny.
‘Did she tell you about it?’
‘Why of course she did,’ said Granny.
That surprised Mary-Kate. She didn’t think her gentle and mismatched grandmother, who liked bus tours and spicy takeaways, needed to know about a giant fire-breathing wyrm. Mary-Kate had been surprised by many things lately, including how her mother had reacted to the whole Woolington Wyrm situation, as though it was almost normal.
‘Did you believe what happened?’ Sometimes, when she thought about it, she could hardly believe what happened herself.
‘There are all sorts of weird and wonderful things in the world,’ said Granny, laughing. ‘Including myself! Have a good time and try to stay out of trouble.’
‘I will try very, very, very hard,’ said Mary-Kate. She kissed her granny’s pink powdered cheek and ignored the puzzled feeling she had.
On the plane, Mary-Kate drew a map of the Greek Islands with her glitter pens. Professor Martin had set her this task. She said it was always important to have a geographical understanding of the place you were visiting. Mary-Kate also knew it was to keep her occupied so she didn’t worry. There were many islands so she divided them into smaller groups. The Ionian, the Saronic, the Cyclades, the Sporades,...
