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Don't Pat the Wombat! - Hardcover

Honey, Elizabeth

 
9780375805783: Don't Pat the Wombat!
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0375805788 ISBN 13: 9780375805783
Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

Camping in the Australian outback is an absolute joy for Mark Ryder and his friends as they get to explore caves, play in the mud, see weird animals, and more, but when Mr. Cromwell arrives, they fear their fun might just be over.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Elizabeth Honey is one of Australia's most popular authors. She began her career as an illustrator but has now published award-winning fiction, picture books, and poetry.

Aus dem Klappentext

Australia's most popular authors, here's a fresh, fast, laugh-out-loud-funny story of boys being boys at school-camp.

"Adults won't find this very tasteful. Sorry, it can't be helped, it's what happened."

Mark Ryder gives us the good, the bad, and the messy in this antic account of his friends' misadventures during a week of school-camp in the Australian outback. Camp is everything the boys expect and more--there are caves to explore, mud fights, bad showers, great food, flashlights, hidden candy, wombats, and leeches. Then disaster strikes: Mr. Cromwell (a.k.a. Crom the Bomb, or simply The Bomb) arrives as a substitute chaperon! "Cromwell at camp is like Darth Vader at your birthday party. How could this happen?" But in the end,
it's what Jonah, Nicko, Wormz, Azza, Mitch, and Mark do to The Bomb that sets off an explosion. . . .

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Two Things

Two things happened the month before school camp: Jonah suddenly arrived in our class, and Mum gave me her old camera for my birthday.

Jonah was there on a Monday morning, sitting in the back with a blank look on his face. He wasn't shy, but he wasn't smiley want-to-be-my-friend either. He wore a black hat with a brim. Not a school hat or a Crocodile Dundee hat. Like this:

and daggy overalls with lots of pockets, and a daggy dark purple jacket.

Miss Cappelli made a little mime to him to take his hat off. He put it on the desk in front of him.

"We've got a new member in our class. Stand up, Jonah. Jonah comes from up near Tubbut."

He stood looking out the window.

"Tubbut's up in the northeast, near...what's it near, Jonah?"

He shrugged. "It's not near anything."

"Azza, will you stop making that Velcro noise with your shoe. Jonah's come from a little school to our big school. Welcome to 5/6C, Jonah. I guess you're feeling a bit strange, but we're a friendly lot. You'll certainly get to know everyone at camp."

We stared at him, but he didn't look at anybody or anything. He stood as if his mother was trying on him some new clothes that he couldn't care less about. Or as if he was trapped in an invisible force field.

Beth the Good, whose dad works in the post office, whispered, "In the Bible, Jonah got swallowed by a whale!"

"Where's his whale?" sniggered Tommo loudly.

"I'd like you to make Jonah welcome," says Miss Cappelli, glaring at Tommo. So we give Jonah a clap like we always do to show our appreciation, or welcome, or any stupid thing. He wasn't the sort of person to clap. Anyway, the clap bounced off Jonah like rain off a tin roof.

"Pete and Tak, could you show Jonah around at lunchtime, please?"

Then we got on with our work.

At lunchtime, Pete says to Jonah, "I'll show you where the toilets are."

"No, it's okay, I'll go with them," says Jonah, pointing to us. And that's how he came to be a Coconut.

Now I'll tell you about the camera. It doesn't sound like much, getting your mum's old camera for your birthday, but it's a Pentax. This is a big deal, even if it has a dint in the viewfinder where Mum dropped it. She bought a new camera and had the old camera repaired. You should see some of the black-and-white photos she took with it. There's one in our kitchen of our old dog leaping down from a fence. It's fantastic!

Mum showed me how to take photos. If you let in too much light, the photo is all white. Not enough light, and the photo is black. And you have to get it in focus, otherwise the photo looks like you took it through a shower curtain.

"I'm taking my camera to school camp," I said.

Mum looked a bit unsure. "It's a good camera, you know."

"I'll look after it."

Then she decided it was worth the risk. "I'd love to see some photos of camp. I'll give you a roll of film."

"Black-and-white?"

"If that's what you want."

"I do."

Friends?

So Jonah attached himself to us, although he didn't seem to need anybody. I think he thought it was the easiest thing to do. He was so quiet, and we were so "us."

"Why did you leave your farm?" Nicko asked.

"We had to."

"Why?"

"Bad luck."

"Like, your dad lost all your money at the casino?"

"No. We didn't sell the bullocks at the right time, then it didn't rain. The prices dropped, and we ran out of feed."

"That's a great heap of bad luck!" said Wormz. "What happened to the bullocks?"

"We trucked them to my uncle's farm and sold our farm."

"Gee...that must have been so bad."

He shrugged. Jonah didn't want to be mothered around.

He looked so uncool. Tomorrow, he'll wear something not so daggy, I thought. But the next day it was the same old overalls and hat. We couldn't figure him out. He was like one of those blanks in Scrabble. But somehow, I wanted him to like us.

Jonah got picked on, especially by Watts and Tommo. They thought everything about him was dumb. He mostly ignored them, which made them worse.

"Hey, derr brain, what do you wear that dumb hat for?" goes Watts.

"It looks real derr dumb dork," goes Tommo.

Jonah looked at Watts's baseball cap.

"Where's Chicago, then?"

"America," says Watts.

"Where?"

"I dunno."

Jonah looked at him without blinking. "It's better than wearing a dumb hat from some city and you don't even know where it is." Then he walked off.

"What are ya, a man or a mouse?" yells Tommo.

"Hey, mousie!" yells Watts. "Here's some cheesy cheesy cheese for ya," and he threw an empty Coke can at him.

"Why don't you flatten him?" said Mitch.

"Waste of time," said Jonah.

In math we were doing prime numbers, and I was thinking if Jonah was a number, he'd be a prime number for sure. Something like 97 that you couldn't divide anything else into. Now, Wormz, he'd be a number everything could be divided into. He'd be easygoing number 12. Me, I take the simple way, I'm 10. Mitch is definitely number 1.

We were sitting on the footpath after school, waiting for Nicko's mum to pick us up.

"What do you think of Jonah the Loner?" goes Mitch.

"I dunno. He doesn't say much," said Azza.

Mitch picked at the sole of his shoe. "He's weird."

"He's okay," said Nicko, "but we'll have to teach him a lot of things."

"Yeah," said Azza. "Can you believe he doesn't know how to play rugby or basketball? Can you believe that?"

"He's been in a time warp," said Nicko. "He was the only kid in grade six at his old school."

"He used to help his dad a lot," said Azza, bouncing a bald tennis ball in the gutter.

"He's not a Coconut," said Mitch.

"He's a tough nut from Tubbut," said Nicko.

"Do we want him hanging round us?" goes Mitch.

"Give him a chance," said Azza. "If he wants to muck around with us, that's cool."

Anyway, after a bit of an argument, we decided Jonah was okay, but weird.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Verlag
Alfred a Knopf Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2000
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0375805788
ISBN 13 
9780375805783
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Zeichner
Clarke William, Honey Elizabeth
Anzahl der Seiten
144
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