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EGMONT

On Planet Fruitcake first published in Great Britain 2013 by Egmont UK Limited The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © Anne Fine 2013

Illustrations copyright © Kate Aldous

The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted

First e-book edition 2013

ISBN 978 1 4052 6356 6 (paperback)

ISBN 978 1 4052 6357 3 (hardback)

eISBN 978 1 7803 1275 0

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Please note: Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont cannot take responsibility for any third party content or advertising. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.

For Kit, of course.

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

1: Problem!

2: ‘Is something wrong with your brains?’

3: On Planet Fruitcake

4: An axe dripping with blood

5: Horribly dangerous

6: Deep in the jungle

7: Something normal

8: Weird and silly things

9: Brains in pots

10: Scoop out my brain

11: Married in a flowerpot hat

12: ‘Don’t you want us thinking?’

13: A clever and beautiful chicken

14: A really stupid baby

15: Suppose! Suppose! Suppose!

16: The One and Only Philip

17: ‘I will not have this pandemonium in my classroom!’

18: Purple cows and black ice lollies

19: You’ve lost the bet

20: The most suitable present

Also by Anne Fine

About the Publisher

1

Problem!

Poor Philip had a problem. Everyone else adored his teacher, Miss Dove. They thought she was the nicest, kindest teacher in the whole school.

‘We are so lucky that we’re in her class!’ Beth kept on telling everyone.

‘Yes,’ Peter agreed. ‘She never gives us vinegary looks, the way the janitor does when we come in on wet mornings, tracking mud all over his clean floors.’

‘Or makes her mouth go tight and crimpy, like Mrs Edmond does when she’s getting ratty.’

Philip said nothing, but he wasn’t so sure. He liked Miss Dove. Of course he did. She was so gentle. But every time she called him up to her desk for a private chat, she said the very same thing.

‘Philip, you’re always so quiet when we have class discussions. You never put up your hand to tell us what you think. Do you suppose you might be a little shy ’

Poor Philip always shrugged. He didn’t believe he was shy. He made as much noise as anyone else in the playground. He cheered as loudly as everyone else when he heard there was pizza for lunch.

But he was quiet in class. He couldn’t think of anything he really wanted to say. If Miss Dove asked him a question like, ‘Does metal float?’, or, ‘What are seven threes?’, he answered quickly enough. But when they talked about things in class, Philip could never think of anything to add to what the others had all said already.

So he was quiet. What was wrong with that?

Beth was still going on about how lucky they were. ‘Miss Dove never snaps at us like Mr Huggett does when he catches us mucking about in the corridors.’

‘No,’ Astrid said. ‘And her eyes never go all narrow, like a cat’s, and flash the scary way Miss Gelland’s do if you forget your sports stuff.’

Still Philip said nothing. He was remembering the last time his mum and dad came back from meeting Miss Dove on parents’ evening.

‘She says you’re very quiet in class,’ his mum had told him.

‘Too quiet,’ said his dad. ‘She says you don’t join in the class discussions. Why is that, Philip? Are you a little scared of her?’

Scared of Miss Dove? How could you ever be scared of Miss Dove. She never made them jump by hissing at them to be quiet, like Mr Pound. Or gave them really fierce looks, like Mrs Carter did if ever they whispered in Assembly. She was the nicest teacher he’d ever had.

Still, on his end of term report she’d written, Philip must try to make more of an effort to speak up in class discussions.

Not that it was easy to get a word in edgeways with his class. Someone was always talking. Even now, James was giving everyone another reason why Miss Dove was the best teacher they could ever have.

‘She never tells us off as strictly as Miss Sprout does.’

‘Or shouts at us, like Mrs Moran does when she’s had enough. Miss Dove would never, ever, ever lose her temper.’

‘We are so lucky,’ Beth reminded them all over again. ‘We’re lucky, lucky, lucky to have Miss Dove.’

And Philip just stayed very quiet.

2

‘Is something wrong with your brains?’

That day it was really, really hot – far too hot to work. Miss Dove was starting a new project, all about travel. First, they made a list on the whiteboard of all the different ways there were of getting to other places. They’d called out all the easy ones like planes and cars and trains and feet and bicycles and buses, but Miss Dove was still standing waiting.

She tried encouraging them. ‘I know you can come up with a few more! Let’s all try to think a bit more and a little harder. Come on, now. Who’s going to be the first to think of another one?’

Still nobody spoke. A bee buzzed in the window and then buzzed out again. Sarah flopped on her desk and spread her arms to try to cool herself. Paul picked up his workbook and used it as a fan.

Miss Dove sighed. ‘What is the matter with you all?’ she said. ‘Is something wrong with your brains today? Why aren’t they working properly?’

‘It’s too hot,’ Amari moaned.

‘And too stuffy,’ wailed Connor.

Astrid hated hot weather. It made her hands go sticky and her plaits feel heavy. So when Miss Dove told Connor and Amari, ‘I don’t see why the weather makes a difference. I don’t see why you can’t just think ’, Astrid said grumpily, ‘You probably wouldn’t like it if we did.’

Miss Dove turned from the whiteboard. Gently she smiled. ‘Now you don’t really believe that, do you, Astrid?’

‘Maybe,’ said Astrid. (She was in the mood to quarrel with anyone, even Miss Dove.) ‘Maybe if we began to use our brains a lot, we would start arguing with you. I don’t think you’d like that.’

Miss Dove beamed. ‘Of course I wouldn’t mind! It is my job to teach you how to think. So if you all began to think really hard about everything, I’d be delighted.’ Miss Dove let out one of her merry, tinkling laughs. ‘Why, Astrid, did you think I might get cross Or lose my temper?’

‘You might,’ said Astrid.

‘Only if we lived on Planet Fruitcake!’

‘Perhaps we do,’ said Astrid stubbornly.

3

On Planet Fruitcake

On Planet Fruitcake. Philip sat quietly, wondering what it meant. It sounded like some upside-down world in which teachers didn’t want anyone to have ideas of their own, and people like him put up their hands in class and joined in the discussions.

It was a really strange idea. And he wasn’t the only one to think so. Clearly Miss Dove did too, because she was saying, ‘Of course we don’t live on Planet Fruitcake! And I’m so sure we don’t, I’ll make a bet with you. You can all use your brains and think for a whole day, and if I once get cross or lose my temper, I’ll buy the whole class a present.’

Everyone giggled at the very idea of sweet, kind, gentle Miss Dove losing her temper.

Except for Astrid. She just asked, ‘What sort of present?’

‘I haven’t had time to think.’ Miss Dove smiled. ‘And you’re not going to get one anyway. I’m going to win the bet because we don’t live on Planet Fruitcake. No one does.’

Still, Philip thought, it was a nice idea. On Planet Fruitcake he’d be someone who put up his hand and joined in the discussions, just like everyone else.

Yes, Planet Fruitcake was the place to be.

4

An axe dripping with blood

‘Right,’ Miss Dove said encouragingly next morning. ‘Ready to use your brains? Are all the tiny wheels inside your heads well-oiled and spinning nicely?’

Everyone nodded. It was cloudier today, and nowhere near so hot and stuffy. Everyone, even Astrid, felt ready to think.

‘Good.’ Miss Dove beamed. ‘Then we’ll begin the minute we get back from Assembly.’

But Philip started sooner than that. Because in Assembly Mrs Carter gave a little talk. ‘Anyone can knock someone over in the playground by accident,’ she said. ‘But they should never try to put the blame on someone else. It’s never, ever right to tell a lie.’

All the way back to the classroom, Philip was thinking. He knew that, if he lived on Planet Fruitcake, he would have something to say to the whole class. He’d put his hand up, just like all the others did.

Why not? Why couldn’t he pretend he lived there. No one would know.

Before he could even think about it for one more minute, Philip had raised his hand.

Miss Dove stared.

So did everyone else.

Miss Dove said kindly, ‘I see your hand’s up, Philip. Have you left something in the hall you need to go back and fetch?’

‘No,’ Philip said. ‘I wanted to tell you that what Mrs Carter just said to us – that it’s never, ever right to tell a lie – well, that’s plain wrong.’

Everyone stared even harder. Then Miss Dove asked him gently, ‘What makes you say that, Philip?’

He wasn’t going to admit he only said it because he was pretending that he was on Planet Fruitcake. So he said, ‘Because that’s what I think.’ And then, because they were still gazing at him in astonishment, he told them what he had been thinking all the way back from Assembly.

‘Suppose you looked out of your window and saw a man waving an axe dripping with blood, and terrified people scuttling away up an alley. If he called up to ask you if you could see anyone trying to hide from him, it would be right to say you couldn’t.’

‘That’s true!’ Arif agreed. ‘You’d say one tiny thing that wasn’t true, but you’d save people’s lives.’

They all chimed in. ‘Yes. That’s much more important.’

‘What could be wrong with that?’

They sat and watched as Miss Dove had a quick think about it. In the end she said, ‘Well, that’s a special example.’

‘Still,’ Astrid said. ‘It proves that Mrs Carter’s wrong.’

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