Opposite Island , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Margaret Mignon

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35 pages

English

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Description

Imagine being in a brand new rowing boat on a quest to find sharks, but instead you discover an island where everything is OPPOSITE! The people there are born old and grow young. They walk backwards, talk backwards, and they even ... fart backwards. This is what happens to Oliver Cook, with annoying little sister Lois in tow, on his tenth birthday. It blows his mind, but when they are summoned by the king and queen - who are tramps that live under a bridge - mind blowing turns to ... well, mind blowing in a bad way. The King and Queen don't want these kids to leave, and on Opposite Island where you grow young, ten-year-old Oliver and eight-year-old Lois will find themselves buried in a matchbox in only a few years! They have to escape, but how, when the Island Police (armed with lethal bunnies) will do anything to keep the new royal pets incarcerated on Opposite Island!

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	27 juin 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781908354198
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0124€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Title Page

OPPOSITE ISLAND

By Margaret Mignon

Publisher Information

Published in 2011 by
GA&P ePublishing

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Digital Edition converted and distributed in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

Copyright © 2011 Margaret Mignon

The right of Margaret Mignon to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Dedication

For my son Zachary, of course.

The Birthday Boat

Oliver Cook was tending to his shiny new rowboat. He had named it The Marvel and had lovingly finished painting the name in big white letters on the starboard side a few hours before. It was his tenth birthday, and the boat, which seated two or maybe three people, was his present. It was a bonus that Oliver and his family, plus his sister, lived by the seaside, and that his birthday was during the summer time. Could things get better? He planned to test out his new boat that day, and then return home hungry from his sea voyage, just like real pirates did, to feast on birthday cake.
‘Can I come?’ asked Lois.
Inwardly, Oliver felt his insides recoil and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He stopped polishing the blue paint on his beloved boat and slowly turned around. His eight year old sister Lois had quietly crept up on him whilst his back was turned. (Sometimes Oliver could swear she had Ninja powers.)
Well, anyway, he was ten now. It wasn’t done to sail with an eight-year-and-three-month-old girl.
‘No. It’s my boat, Lois. Go away. Why don’t you go off and collect your ladybirds and butterflies, then jail them against their will in jam jars?’ (This was Lois’s hobby: collecting bugs and keeping them in jam jars. She would treat the trapped insect like pets. Only, the poor bugs never lasted long.)
Lois huffed and screwed up her nose, and then something she thought of lit up her face. ‘Okaaaay. I won’t come. It’s just ... I’ll have to tell Mum and Dad, as they said you shouldn’t sail on your own,’ she said, smiling slyly.
Oliver sighed.
‘Also, I know you don’t even have permission to sail at all. That was the rule as well. Only when Mum and Dad know and “not on your own,”‘ Lois recited in a sing-song voice. ‘They said that right after they showed you the boat this morning. Remember ?’ She crossed her arms, smiling triumphantly. ‘It’s all about safety, Oliver.’
‘Fine. Hope you don’t mind sharks,’ said Oliver, slipping into his boat and untying the rope from the jetty.
‘Hey, not without me!’ Lois said as she quickly hopped into the boat before he could sail off without her. It rocked side to side with their weight.
Oliver couldn’t help but wonder what they must look like, sitting together in such a small and confined space. They both had flaming red-hair and were sitting in a brightly painted blue boat. Hardly stealth-like, which one needs for scoping the ocean for pirates, sharks, and invading war ships. Oliver slipped on his large, black, three-pointed pirate hat, complete with skull and cross-bones, to aid in camouflage.
‘I’m a-going shark hunting. Fasten your seat belt,’ said Oliver, smiling wickedly and hoping this would change his sister’s mind.
‘Don’t believe you,’ Lois said, very sure of herself. ‘You’re frightened of wasps. When you see one, you run like your butt is on fire. I even heard you scream once. So there’s no way your going after sharks.’ She shook her head in amusement.
‘You get stung on the forehead, and then see how you feel about wasps!’ Oliver spat defensively. (If the truth be known, Oliver didn’t like bugs at all after the wasp incident. Sometimes he was soooo sure Lois captured her pet bugs for the sole purpose of winding him up. Annoyingly, no one believed him when he voiced his suspicions.) ‘Look, Lois,’ Oliver pleaded. ‘ The Marvel is MY boat. MINE! Just get out please.’
‘The what?’ Lois asked, sounding confused.
‘ The. Marvel .’ Oliver said as if he were speaking to someone hard of hearing. ‘You know, the name painted on the right hand side of the boat you are now sitting in?’
Lois frowned. ‘It says “E.H.T. L.E.M.A.R.L.” I thought it was French,’ she said shrugging.
Oliver was about to protest then felt his face burn with embarrassment. He had what was called “Mirror Writing,” which meant he could read just fine, but he wrote things in reverse. Even worse, when he wrote mirror style, it looked normal to him. Initially it had baffled him that his school teachers could not read his writing (but now he just expected them to find his work rubbish). Also, sometimes Oliver said the opposite to what he meant. Like saying, “Wow, its cold,” when he meant to say it was hot. If he wasn’t corrected, Oliver felt normal.
So notes had been sent home; his mum became upset, his dad became angry, and then came the smiling strangers that were “just going to sit with him today at school,” and who Oliver was to pretend “were not there.”
Later, he found out the strangers were “undercover special-needs teachers” and other types of people that had “special” jobs. None of them were doctors - not even head-doctors - but these smiling strangers had decided to label him with dyslexia, ADHD, dyspraxia, deafness... all the D’s! They just couldn’t decide which one he had caught.
Then one overzealous head-teacher at school named Mr. Pratt had claimed that Oliver was a problem-child who didn’t know how to write correctly because he never paid attention, was naughty and was probably mildly retarded - and therefore was a drain on school resources. Oliver’s mother and father went berserk and ... well; the head-teacher never said anything like that to him again and was now on extended vacation. Oliver felt it was soooo unfair that Mr. Pratt was not even told off for being so cruel and instead got a long holiday!
Oliver had loads of friends and - despite his grades never being very good - he was, in general, happy. But when he was corrected, he felt stupid. His parents tried to boost his confidence by telling him Leonardo Di Vinci, a really famous artist from the olden days, apparently use to write backwards. But when Oliver wasn’t able to do the schoolwork the other kids could, he still felt like he was rubbish at smart things, and this made him sad ... then angry. Oliver escaped feeling dumb by making up elaborate stories in his head that would one day see him become one of Hollywood’s most famous screen writers. (Even though he might have to dictate his ideas to someone else to type up!)
On the boat, Lois, who knew all about Oliver’s ‘unidentified D disorder’, tried to backtrack. ‘Well,’ she said, smiling awkwardly, ‘you can tell it says Marvel. I thought it was the French way of writing it. Err -’
‘Let’s set off!’ Oliver said, trying not to make eye contact.
Lois was in his new boat, and to Oliver it seemed she was smiling like a Cheshire cat that had managed to get the cream that came with a side-order of mouse pie. He pushed the small boat from the jetty with the oars; shot Lois (who looked like she was straining on the toilet) a quick steely glare, and then he began to row away - backwards.

The Smudge

The water was calm and so far, no fins. Maybe if he threw Lois overboard it might attract - Oliver quickly stopped his no-no thought, chided himself, and pulled himself together. Taking a deep breath, he resumed scoping the waters with his binoculars, alert for any danger.
Lois sat opposite him, bored.
‘Oliver, can we fish?’ she asked. ‘I’d quite like to catch a mermaid.’
Oliver gritted his teeth. ‘No,’ he said with more patience than he intended.
‘Well, what are we doing?’ Lois asked.
‘Sailing.’
Lois sighed and began to hum some random tune.
‘Hang about!’ Oliver exclaimed suddenly.
Lois jumped on her bench seat.
‘I believe I see an island. Land ahoy!’ Oliver yelled happily.
‘Where?’ asked Lois, her head darting in every direction.
Oliver pointed.
She couldn’t see what he was pointing at. ‘I wanna go hooooome,’ she wailed. This was obviously more than she had bargained for.
Oliver lowered his binoculars and looked at his sister incredulously. ‘Are you mad? That’s probably undiscovered land. I will go down in history as a discoverer. I, Oliver Cook, will be the new Captain Cook!’ Eat that, Mr. Pratt, he thought bitterly.
Lois looked unconvinced.
Oliver began to row towards the island. It looked like a small brown smudge, and Oliver was going to be the first to claim the smudge in the name of the Queen. If only he’d remembered to bring a Union Flag to officially stab into the ground, he thought, peeved with himself.

The Backward Stranger

The tide was going in with vigor. Strangely, without Oliver even rowing anymore, the boat seemed to shoot towards the island with ridiculous speed. Oliver and Lois held onto the sides as they found the boat catapulted toward the beach. It came to a sudden halt when it stuck into the wet sand, and Oliver and Lois were flung forward, as if they were in a car that had braked abruptly.
The water around them was an inch deep. Oliver expertly hopped out of the boat, ordered L