Monster Stories
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Benji and the Buzzer
Benji had been looking forward to the Mathletics competition for weeks… He had sharpened six pencils, packed his favourite biscuits and practised his multiplication tables all the way up to twenty-seven. He was so excited that his ears had been standing even straighter than usual, which nobody had thought possible. Charley had volunteered to accompany him. He wasn’t particularly…
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Wendy and the Grumpy Patient
Albertus had a thorn in his foot… It wasn’t a particularly large thorn, but it was in an awkward place, and after three days of limping about and complaining about the state of the world’s vegetation, he finally went to see Wendy. Wendy removed the thorn in approximately four seconds. She cleaned the little wound, gave his foot a…
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Wayne Takes the Plunge
Wayne was having a wonderful afternoon… The sky was a lovely shade of pink swirled with white, the enormous purple flowers were singing their usual afternoon song, and Jasmine was looking particularly beautiful. He had been trying to impress her for most of the morning. He’d told her his best jokes, complimented her eyes, and even performed a little…
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Penny’s Chicken Sandwiches
Penny had a great idea… She would have a picnic, just like she had seen the humans do in the park on Sundays. She invited all her friends and told Iggy to bring a ball and Emilio to bring a kite for flying after, but none of them had to bring food because she was going to make sandwiches.…
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Archibald and the Magpie’s Treasure
Archibald loved the wind… He loved the way it caught beneath his wings and lifted him, the way the forest dropped away below him, and the wonderful feeling of having absolutely nothing beneath his feet. Up here, the world was enormous. He could go anywhere he liked, as fast as he liked, and nobody ever told him to sit…
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Emilio Comes for Tea
Archibald had invited Emilio to tea… “Just come up whenever you like!” he’d said, pointing to a nest high in the branches of an enormous oak tree. Emilio looked up. It was a very long way. “No problem!” he said. “I’ve got this!” He put one of his big front feet on the trunk, then the other. His two…
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Mikey and the Missing Keys
Mikey was waiting for MammaSteena to come home … when he noticed that the picture in the hallway was a bit crooked, about two millimetres too far to the right. He fixed it. But now that the picture was straight, the table underneath wasn’t quite centred anymore. He fixed that too. Oh, look at that. Now the table was…
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Charley Protects the Picnic
Penny had been looking forward to the picnic all week… She had packed a basket full of goodies, chosen a lovely spot beneath an oak tree, and invited all her friends. She wanted everything to be just right. She was carefully spreading out the picnic blanket when Charley shouted, “STOP!” Penny froze. Charley was staring at an ant crawling…
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Albertus and the Bench
Albertus had a favourite bench in the park… beneath a large chestnut tree, with a good view of the pond. He went there most afternoons to watch the ducks. The ducks didn’t seem to mind what he looked like, although they were inclined to expect bread. People were another matter. Whenever Albertus sat on the bench, people tended to…
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Paolo’s Fireball
Paolo had been living in MammaSteena’s garage for three weeks… And in that time he had made several improvements. He had reorganised all the tools, repaired a broken lawnmower, and built a machine that sorted screws by size. He had also dismantled the garage door opener, but that was a temporary situation. His greatest discovery, however, was MammaSteena’s car.…
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Angelica Says Cheeeeeze
Angelica had been at the beach for nearly an hour and was having a wonderful time… The sea was beautiful, the sand was warm, and there were people everywhere. She hadn’t actually spoken to any of them yet, but that was all right. She was on holiday, and there was plenty of time. She had smiled at a lady…
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Stacie visits Paris
Stacie had been waiting a very long time to see the Eiffel Tower… She had seen photographs, studied its construction and learned exactly how tall it was. She knew when it had been built, how many rivets it contained and why it grew slightly taller in hot weather. None of this prepared her for actually standing underneath it. It…
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Spiddleby Finds A Leaf
Spiddleby had found an extraordinary leaf… At first glance it looked perfectly ordinary, but Spiddleby did not believe in first glances. There was a strange pattern in the veins near the stem, and he had been lying in the grass studying it for nearly twenty minutes when Iggy arrived. Iggy wanted to know what he was doing. Spiddleby explained,…
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Iggy and the red button
Iggy was watching Paolo work… He was working on something important. It was a small box with wires sticking out of it and a big red button on top. He had been fiddling with it all morning (which was difficult because Paolo has no thumbs). Iggy liked buttons, especially big red ones. He reached out a finger and pressed…
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The first time I met Ishby
So and well, now, I want to tell you about the first time I met Ishby. It was early in November 2025. The monsters had only just started coming to me, and only in bits and pieces and abstract impressions. Ishby was the first to show himself to me whole. He was the first to talk to me, or…
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Mary and the thorny nuts
So this one time, Mary was walking in the woods and the music of the forest came upon her. She was stepping in the grass and feeling the crunch of the leaves under her feet – crunch crunch crunchy crunch crunch…her step in time with her heart beat. Her feet started shuffling the beat of the leaves and her…