1 Dreaming

'Grimwood makes me laugh out loud? FRANK COTTRELL BOYCE GRUNOOD SHINK MOWSTER!! Bestselling COMEDY adventure from NADIA SHIREEN

CHAPTER ONE Dreaming It was the middle of the night in Grimwood. The leaves on the trees glinted silver in the bright moonlight. All was quiet. All was still. 'AWOOGA, AWOOGA, AWOOOOOOGA!' shouted Sharon the Party Crow. She staggered through the forest, leaving a trail of glitter behind her. 'Where have you been, Shaz?' asked an inquisitive worm. 'Hen party,' said Sharon, peeling off her false eyelashes. 'It was OUTRAGEOUS! I laid a massive egg.' 'Wicked,' said the worm. Sharon's noisy arrival in Grimwood caused a bit of a kerfuffle. Animals started to wake from their deep sleep. 'Hoot, hoot, hoot!' said an owl. 'Tweet, tweet,' said a little sparrow. 'Woof,' said a weird frog.

'Yummo, banana time!' said an ant who had just found a banana. 'Pipe down, everyone,' said another, much grumpier, owl. 'Some of us are trying to sleep!' The grumpy owl was called Frank, and he had been having an excellent dream where he had found a very rare record by legendary jazz musician Gonzo McDougall. 'You can have it for free!' said the shopkeeper. 'In fact, take all these expensive records for free, Frank. It's your lucky day. Hoot, hoot!' 'Oh, wow!' said Frank. 'This is the happiest day of my life!' But then the 'hoot-hooting' of the real-life owl woke him up,

and when he realized it had all just been a dream, he was as annoyed as annoyed could be. Titus the stag was dreaming about finally winning the Grimwood Jamboree, a ruthlessly competitive annual jam- making competition. He entered every year, but always lost out to Cerise Lachance, a local beaver. In his dream, Titus was shaking the hoof of the chief judge– the Mayor of Grimwood– and smiling as a golden rosette was pinned to his front. The fact that Titus himself was the Mayor of Grimwood didn't seem to matter in dreamland. 'It's an honour!' said Titus. 'Your jam was quite marvellous,' said the other Titus. Then Titus opened his mouth to lick some jam from the jar, but his tongue just kept getting longer and longer, and suddenly the other Titus had turned into his old Geography teacher, and isn't it annoying when dreams go all weird like that? Willow, an extremely cute bunny, was sleeping next to her 153 brothers and sisters in their warren in Bunnyville, an area

'of Grimwood that had been taken over completely by cows bunnies. 'Zzzzap! Take that, losers! In the dream, she was a MASSIVE GIANT ROBOT BUNNY who could shoot lasers from her eyes, and she was stompin' through the Big City, blowin' up cars and dustbins and aliens and stuff. Wiggy the badger was snoring almost as loudly as his brothers Monty, Jeremy, Jeremy and Jeremy. He was dreaming about tucking into a large all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. 'Mmm,' he dribbled. 'Eggs, sausage, beans, bacon, toast, mushrooms, tomatoes, chips, hash browns, onion rings and a burger thrown in for luck. Oh, and a strawberry milkshake.

Hooray!' He reached for the bottle of tomato sauce, and with an energetic sqthrpthrht! he squeezed it all over his food, all over his head, and then all over the room until he was swimming in a gloopy sea of ketchup. Over in the grey waters of the Small Pond, Ingrid the duck was floating serenely on her island of shopping trolleys. She and her husband, Sir Charles Fotheringay, wore matching silk eye masks and fluffy slippers. Ingrid was having one of her very favourite dreams. She was at a swanky awards ceremony, perched high above the stage. Nobody could see her. Beneath her stood her greatest rival, Tufty Honeycake, an annoying young duck with big eyes and shiny golden feathers. Tufty had taken all of Ingrid's acting jobs, and now she was winning an award for Best Actress, which was utterly preposterous.