The Bolds' Great Adventure Read online

  ‘And that is why we Bolds have tails,’ added Mrs Bold.

  ‘And why we’re hairy, with pointy ears,’ added Mr Bold.

  ‘And why we laugh so much!’ chortled Mrs Bold.

  ‘We thought you should know all of this before you start school tomorrow.’

  Bobby and Betty looked at each other and giggled.

  ‘Wowsers!’ said Betty.

  ‘We are special!’ said Bobby.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ said their mother. ‘Very special. And you always will be. Now settle down.’ And she tucked them up.

  ‘So,’ said Betty, rubbing her eyes. ‘We are hyenas, but no one must ever find out?’

  ‘Correct,’ said Mr and Mrs Bold as one.

  ‘And we mustn’t draw attention to ourselves,’ said Bobby, snuggling under his duvet and yawning – it was getting rather late.

  ‘Learning can be fun!’

  ‘Dreams really can come true!’

  ‘And everything will always... be... all right in the end,’ said Betty slowly. By the time she had finished speaking, both twins’ eyes had closed and a few seconds later they were fast asleep.

  Mrs Bold turned the bedside light out and Mr Bold gave both pups a gentle stroke of their ears. Then they crept out of the bedroom and went downstairs to prepare the twins’ packed lunches for their very first day at school.

  ‘I think that went rather well,’ said Mrs Bold as she cut four thick slices of bread.

  Knock, knock!

  Who’s there?

  Loaf!

  Loaf who?

  I don’t just like bread, I loaf it!

  Then the two hyenas laughed so much, they each had to cover their snouts with a tea towel in case they woke the twins.

  THE END

  More Bold Adventures!

  If you’ve enjoyed this story then why not read about more of the Bolds’ adventures? Will their secret be discovered? Will the twins be able to hide their tails during P.E. lessons? And will the family always be able to see the funny side of things?

  MR BOLD'S JOKES

  Why did the bus stop?

  Because it saw the zebra crossing!’

  What do you get if you cross a road with a safari park?

  Double yellow lions!

  What do you call a pig who steals things?

  A hamburglar!

  What do you get if you cross an elephant with a bottle of whisky?

  Trunk and disorderly!

  Doing anything nice for Christmas?

  I’m having my Grandma. Which will make a change. We normally have turkey

  What do you give a sick hog?

  Oinkment!

  What’s the difference between a wet day and an injured lion?

  One pours with rain, the other roars with pain!

  Why does a traffic light turn red?

  Well, if you had to change in front of everyone, you’d turn red too!

  Knock, knock!

  Who’s there?

  Cash!

  Cash who?

  Cash me if you can!

  Where does a fish keep his money?

  In a river bank!

  What time do ducks wake up?

  The quack of dawn!

  What do you call a leopard that has a bath three times a day?

  Spotless!

  Knock, knock!

  Who’s there?

  Cash!

  Cash who?

  I knew you were a nut!

  Does money grow on trees?

  No.

  Then why do banks have branches?

  What did the policeman say to his tummy?

  You are under a vest!

  What did the volcano say to the other volcano?

  I lava you!

  What time is it when the elephant sits on the fence?

  Time to fix the fence!

  What do you call a dinosaur with no eyes?

  Doyouthinkhesaurus?!

  What do you do if a teacher rolls her eyes at you?

  Roll them back!

  Why are ghosts such bad liars?

  Because you can see right through them!

  Why do bees have sticky hair?

  Because they use honeycombs!

  What do you get if you cross a vampire with a snowman?

  Frostbite!

  What starts with P and ends in E and has a million letters in it?

  Post office!

  What has a face and two hands but no arms or legs?

  A clock!

  What can you catch but not throw?

  A cold!

  Knock, knock!

  Who’s there?

  Mikey.

  Mikey who?

  Mikey doesn’t fit in the lock!

  Knock, knock!

  Who’s there?

  Howard.

  Howard who?

  Howard I know?

  Knock, knock!

  Who’s there?

  Frank.

  Frank who?

  Frank you for being my friend!

  What did the mummy snake say to the crying baby snake?

  ‘Stop crying and viper your nose!’

  Knock, knock!

  Who’s there?

  Loaf!

  Loaf who?

  I don’t just like bread, I loaf it!

  These animals are also in disguise. Can you unscramble the letters to reveal the real creature?

  KANSE

  FRIGAFE

  LIDOCORCE

  OPENTALE

  OLNI

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

  Andersen Press Ltd,

  20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SWIV 2SA

  www.andersenpress.co.uk

  Text Copyright © Steve Webb, 2016

  Illustration Copyright © Chris Mould, 2016

  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 the written permission of the publisher.

  The rights of Steve Webb and Chris Mould to be identified as the author and Illustrator of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available

  ISBN 978 1 78344 400 7

  The Spangler

  Spangles McNasty was nasty to everyone and everything, everywhere, all of the time.

  He had a heart as cold as a box of fish fingers in a supermarket freezer, a brain brimming with badness and a head bristling with baldness.

  There was only one thing Spangles liked more than being nasty, and that was collecting spangly things: shiny, sparkly, glittery, spangly things. Of course, when he said ‘collecting’, he meant ‘taking without asking or paying’, or as everyone else calls it, stealing.

  A perfect day for Spangles McNasty would start with a handful of his favourite breakfast – cold, greasy chips, scooped from a bin on the seafront so he didn’t have to pay for them. He’d follow this with pulling faces at old ladies, shouting at babies and, if at all possible, farting in the local library. But, best of all, it would end with collecting something spangly on the way home.

  If he could collect something spangly from an old lady with a baby in a library, whilst eating cold chips, farting, pulling a face and shouting all at the same time, it would quite possibly be the happiest day of his entire nasty life.

  Sadly for Spangles, that day had so
far escaped him, but each and every morning he awoke with a new nasty hope in his frozen-fish-finger-box heart. ‘Maybe today’s the day, Trevor,’ he would say hopefully.

  Trevor was a goldfish. He lived with Spangles in a rusty old camper van, which had ended a long adventure-filled travelling life at a scrap yard, where it would have been recycled, had it not been for Spangles McNasty walking in one afternoon and ‘collecting’ it while no one was looking.

  He had been doing his nasty collecting business in it ever since.

  Camper vans are, of course, little completely mobile homes (like tortoises, but faster and with more seat belts). However, Spangles’ camper rarely left his home town of Bitterly Bay, except when he was away on special collecting business. Nestled in a curve of coastline between the Jelly Cliffs in the north and Sandylands to the south, Bitterly Bay was ‘home spangly home’ to Spangles McNasty. An expression he liked so much, he’d written it with his finger in the dirt that covered his van, just above where he’d written, ‘Trevor is a stinker’.

  Trevor swam in tiny contented circles round and round a small glass bowl hanging from the camper’s rear-view mirror, where most people hang air fresheners shaped like Christmas trees.

  Spangles kept Trevor hanging in the window of his camper van for two reasons. Firstly, so he had someone to talk to, and secondly, to watch the sunshine spangle on his shiny golden skin, which it was doing magnificently on the sunny Saturday morning our story begins.

  Trevor swam on peacefully in his fish-bowl camper-van home, parked outside a newsagent’s. He was as happy as a fish, as the old saying goes (well, it doesn’t, but it should). Spangles, meanwhile, was inside the newsagent’s, buying the local newspaper. He too, was as happy as a fish.

  Trevor stopped swimming momentarily and watched the familiar baldy figure of Spangles approach.

  Spangles strode purposefully through the newsagent’s, swinging his patched-up pinstripe-suited arms and legs almost high enough to flick his threadbare baseball boots at the ceiling.

  He whistled merrily at his naughty reflection in the glass door as he was leaving, wriggling his large handlebar moustache and allowing his bushy caterpillar eyebrows a quick dance before trying to slam the shop door behind him. Rather annoyingly, it had one of those self-closing-smoothly mechanisms. Muttering something nasty under his breath, Spangles climbed back into the driver’s seat of his camper and slammed that door instead. The van shook, setting off its ancient alarm, which wailed like an unhappy elephant at Weight Watchers. He then leant on the horn accidentally-on-purpose just to be sure.

  The sunshine, the newsagent, the milkman, Trevor and Spangles were all awake, but the rest of the world was still tucked up in bed, sound asleep. Well, they had been.

  ‘Wakey, wakey,’ Spangles said brightly, unfolding his newspaper, before turning to Trevor. ‘Hello there, my spangly friend,’ he beamed. ‘And may I say how super-shiny you is lookin’ this beautiful sunny mornin’!’ Spangles was feeling unusually cheerful, and it wasn’t just because he’d woken 146 local residents somewhat earlier than they’d like on a Saturday. He had nasty plans for the day ahead, and nothing made him happier than carefully prepared nastiness.

  ‘Imagine when you’re fully growed!’ Spangles said, grinning manically at the shiny fish. He believed completely that goldfish grow to the size of whales, and are, in fact, made of solid gold. ‘Imagine the spangles on that, Trev!’ he said, but Trevor wasn’t listening, he was busy swimming in and out of his little castle, playing soldiers.

  ‘Have you seen today’s headline in the paper?’ Spangles held up the front page of the Bitterly Daily Blah Blah for Trevor to read. Trevor said nothing. He couldn’t read.

  ‘Says here, “More goldfish thefts! Sandylands is the third seaside town to be hit by the mysterious goldfish thief.” ’ Spangles chuckled to himself. ‘How very strange, eh, Trev. Some people are right peculiar, ain’t they? What kind of a nut box would collect shiny golden fish?’

  He waited a polite second or two for Trevor’s response and then shouted over his shoulder to the living area, ‘All right in the back?’

  There was no reply.

  There was no reply because there was no one living in the living area. No one apart from 326 goldfish, and they never spoke. This was something that did not especially worry Spangles. As long as they all grew as big as whales and made him rich, he’d be happy.

  As Spangles turned the key in the ignition, the engine grumbled its annoyance at being started so early in the morning. The bright sunshine streamed through the front window and shimmered on Trevor’s shiny golden fins.

  ‘Ah, Trev, me old spangler,’ Spangles said, as the camper lurched down the road, coughing thick clouds of unspeakable filth from its rusty exhaust. ‘This is going to be a right super spangler of a day, I can just feel it. Bitterly Bay, here we come.’

  Spangles McNasty is convinced that he can get rich quick by stealing goldfish – after all, aren’t they made of solid gold? Together with his friend Sausage-face Pete, he decides to find the great Fish of Gold. Only young Freddie Taylor can stop Spangles’ dastardly plan, in a tale full of time-travelling jet skis, madcap chases and haunted custard.

  ‘Unadulterated fun!’ Lovereading

  ‘Ludicrous and funny’ BookTrust

  Spangles McNasty has inherited a rickety old rollercoaster called the Tunnel of Doom. If he wants to make any lovely money from it, he and his best friend Sausage-face Pete will need to do some hard work and repair it. Spangles won’t stand for that, so he comes up with a dastardly plot to get rich quick. It’s up to local boy Freddie Taylor to stop him in his tracks!

  978 1 78344 508 0

  When the legendarily famous and very sparkly Diamond Skull pirate hat comes to Bitterly Bay Museum, Spangles and his best mate Sausage-face Pete want to get their thieving fingers on it. But they haven’t reckoned on local boy and all-round good egg Freddie Taylor and his cunning plan to mix things up with a clever hat trick . . .

  978 1 78344 638 4