Selby Snowbound (11 page)

A boy named Luke in my home town
Can put his head on upside-down.
His mouth is up, his eyes are down
His happy smile becomes a frown.
And if you think that isn’t weird
His spiky hair’s a short black beard.

He puts his hat upon his chin
And when it rains his nose drips in.
As you’d expect this makes him wheeze
And cough and snort and even sneeze.
He blows his nose and up it goes
Like water from a garden hose.

And when he’s drinking from a cup
Luke lets his drool go running up
Across his lip, just past his nose,
Into his eye this liquid goes
He cries: ‘Oh goody look at me!
I can wash my eyes with Luke-warm tea!’

The author would like to thank all of those wonderful Selby fans who have written to him over the years. And a very special thanks to one of them, Brendan Watts, who suggested that Dr Trifle invent a machine to teach the non-swimming Selby how to swim. Dr Trifle doesn’t usually take advice from anyone but when he heard this he thought: ‘Why not?’ For the results see the story called ‘The Paddle-Pup’.

Duncan Ball is an Australian author and scriptwriter, best known for his popular books for children. Among his most-loved works are the Selby books of stories plus the collections
Selby’s Selection, Selby’s Joke Book
and
Selby’s Sidesplitting Joke Book.
Some of these books have also been published in New Zealand, Germany, Japan and the USA, and have won countless awards, most of which were voted by the children themselves.

Among Duncan’s other books are the Emily Eyefinger series about the adventures of a girl who was born with an eye on the end of her finger, and the comedy novels
Piggott Place
and
Piggotts in Peril,
about the frustrations of twelve-year-old Bert Piggott forever struggling to get his family of ratbags and dreamers out of the trouble they are constantly getting themselves into.

Duncan lives in Sydney with his wife, Jill, and their cat, Jasper. Jasper often keeps Duncan company while he’s writing and has been known to help by walking on the keyboard. Once, returning to his work, Duncan found the following word had mysteriously appeared on screen: ikantawq .........