Fizzlebert Stump and the Girl Who Lifted Quite Heavy Things

DO YOU HAVE THEM ALL?

□ 1 Fizzlebert Stump: The Boy Who Ran Away from the Circus and Joined the Library

□ 2 Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy

□ 3 Fizzlebert Stump: The Boy Who Cried Fish

□ 4 Fizzlebert Stump and the Girl Who Lifted Quite Heavy Things

□ 5 Fizzlebert Stump: The Boy Who Did P.E. in His Pants

□ 6 Fizzlebert Stump and the Supermarket ShowdownReaders

READERS SAY …

‘It’s funny, fantastic and ridiculous. I would put it in my top five

books of all time, and I’ve read a lot of books -

probably at least three thousand’

Milo, age 8

‘Evil old people, a sea lion in a sparkly jacket and a lion called

Charles with false teeth! What more could you want?

I laughed my socks off’

Florence, age 9

‘This book is like the 100 best books in the world put together!’

Hugo, age 10

‘A great story that made me fizz with laughter!’

Felix, age 12

Also by A.F. Harrold

The series

Illustrated by Sarah Horne

Fizzlebert Stump: The Boy Who Ran Away from the Circus and Joined the Library

Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy

Fizzlebert Stump: The Boy Who Cried Fish

Fizzlebert Stump and the Girl Who Lifted Quite Heavy Things

Fizzlebert Stump: the Boy Who Did P.E. in His Pants

Fizzlebert Stump and the Supermarket Showdown

The series

Illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton

Greta Zargo and the Death Robots from Outer Space

Greta Zargo and the Amoeba Monsters from the Middle of the Earth

The Imaginary

The Afterwards

Illustrated by Emily Gravett

The Song from Somewhere Else

Illustrated by Levi Pinfold

FOR CLAIRE, DOM & FREYA

ow, I don’t know if you ever watch the television. Of course I don’t, how could I? This is only the first sentence of the book and I don’t even know your name. We’ve not been introduced properly. I’m the chap telling you this story, my name’s probably on the front cover somewhere (it escapes me right now), and you are . . . ?

Sorry about that, but that’s what happens if you interrupt on the first page. I get distracted. Okay. Here we go. Let’s start again.

Ahem.

I don’t know if you ever watch the television, but if you do you might have noticed that sometimes programmes have a little sequence before the opening credits. Sometimes it’s all the usual characters you see week in and week out (maybe they’re sharing a joke or recapping what happened in the last episode), but occasionally it’s people you’ve never seen before. More than that, it’s people you don’t know doing stuff that makes you wonder if you’ve even tuned in to the right channel. What is all this? you think. But then the theme tune starts and the credits roll and you sit back and forget about it until much later on when it all becomes relevant. That is to say: if you’re patient, it’ll all make sense in the end.

Well, the first chapter of this book is a bit like that. If you’ve read one of these books about Fizzlebert Stump before (the ones I spent ages writing, so you should read them, if only out of politeness) you’ll notice right away that he’s not in the first scene. In fact, no one you know is. None of his friends from the circus where he lives are in it. His mum (a clown) isn’t in it, his dad (a strongman) isn’t in it. Fish (a sea lion) isn’t in it. None of the people you’ve read about in all the other books are in it.

And if you’ve never read any of the other books about Fizzlebert and his adventures (books that, as I said, I spent ages writing), then it’s probably just as important to let you know that this first chapter’s an odd thing, because I don’t want you sitting there reading it saying to yourself: ‘Well, I don’t think much of this writer, he’s completely forgotten his main character.’ Fizz will turn up, if you’re patient. Okay? Is that clear? No complaining about this beginning? Thank you.

Now, I’ll get on with it.

Scene one.

The first scene.

The beginning of the book. Finally, after all that apologetic preamble. (Preamble is an interesting word actually: amble means ‘walk around pointlessly’, and pre- means ‘before’, so it means: ‘a pointless wander round beforehand’, which is, if you think about it for a moment and stop interrupting with silly questions, more or less exactly what just happened.)

As I said: now we begin.

It was a dark and stormy night. Lightning flashed like jagged electric spears beneath great black clouds. The rain lashed in roaring gushing sheets from the sky. Windows rattled in their frames, trees rocked this way and that, and the noise of the pouring rain on the roofs of the buildings sounded like a machine gun spraying its bullets across a particularly soggy battlefield.

(That’s very descriptive writing, isn’t it? Really setting the scene nicely. It was well worth waiting for, don’t you think? Sets a high standard for the rest of the book.)

It wasn’t the sort of night to be out on. Anyone with any sense was at home, locked in behind waterproof doors, tucked up under a duvet reading a book by torchlight. Even owls were huddled together in their barns, keeping warm by hooting at each other, except they didn’t know they were being hooted at because the storm was roaring too loudly outside to hear a hoot. It wasn’t a good night to be an owl.

It wasn’t a good night to be a balloonist either. (And by balloonist I don’t mean a children’s entertainer who folds long sausage-shaped balloons into the dim likenesses of animals or bicycles or historical figures, but the sort of person who flies a hot air balloon.)

You must know what a hot air balloon looks like – a great big upside-down tear-drop thing, full of hot air, with a wicker basket dangling underneath where the pilot and his or her passengers sit turning the knobs on the burner which shoots out flames, keeping the hot air hot and the balloon in the sky.

Just in case you still don’t know what I’m talking about, here comes a balloon now.

Out of the storm a dark shape approaches. A flash of lightning explodes behind it, but all we see is the black silhouette of a hot air balloon and it’s getting bigger, it’s coming closer.

Now we’re inside the balloon’s basket. There are two figures looking harassed, panicked, worried and windswept. One is a man and one is a woman and both wear leather flying caps with rain-flecked goggles and have beautiful moustaches that flap about in the storm. Between them is the burner, the thing like a large camping stove that shoots flames into the mouth of the balloon. But tonight the flames are small, and they flicker as if they’re about to go out.

‘We need more height,’ the man shouts, his words barely reaching across the basket before being whipped away on the wind.

‘I’m trying. I’m trying,’ the woman shouts back, fiddling with the knobs on her side of the burner. ‘We need more gas.’

The man rushes to the front of the basket, leans over and looks out into the storm. He lifts his goggles to see better but is forced to squint as the rain lashes his eyeballs.

‘A tree,’ he shouts suddenly, pointing. ‘A tree!’

The basket smashes into the leafy, branchy, bushy head of the tree in question and bursts out the other side.

‘More height,’ he shouts again, before turning back to the burner to help the woman with one of the controls, which seems to be jammed.

Now, suddenly, the scene changes. The noise quietens. We’re indoors. A perfectly normal farmer is walking across the landing in the early hours of the morning. He’s coming from the bathroom where he’s just had a wee, going back to his bedroom, where he’s been tucked under the duvet with a good book. He pulls the curtain to one side to have a quick look out the window to see if the storm’s ending yet. It isn’t.

Rain is beating against the glass. Outside he can just about see the dark shapes of trees that separate the farmhouse from the fields, and then . . . Oh! He sees something else.

His jaw drops, his eyes go wide: something’s coming!

A dark shape in the sky, huge and getting bigger. It’s coming straight at him. He sees a flickering spurt of fire in the middle of it and then he thinks he can make out voices, but the wind is too strong, the rain too loud and the glass in the windows too thick for him to hear what they’re saying anyway, and then . . .

CRASH!

A hot air balloon has flown into his farmhouse.

And then, if this really were a television programme, just as you were sitting up and paying attention going, ‘Oh golly gosh, a hot air balloon has just flown into a house, what a nuisance!’, suddenly the credits sequence would start up. That theme tune you know so well would burst into life, all jolly and upbeat, and you’d be tapping your toes, maybe even singing along . . .

Hey! Guys! It’s the Fizzlebert Show!

Grab your hat, it’s time to go.

Pull on your coat and get in the tent,

an hour with Fizz is an hour well spent.

Thump, thump, thump, thumpity-thump.

This is the show about Fizzlebert Stump!

(or something like that)

. . . and, one after another, each of the characters would appear, turn to the camera and smile as their actor’s name is shown underneath, except, of course, in this book there are no actors (except Alexander Fakespeer, The Man What Does Shakespeare, an act from another different circus who appears briefly in the background in Chapter Seven).

So, the music’s rolling, the song’s singing, and a short boy with an enormous beard tumbles across the sawdusty ground, springs to his feet, turns to face the camera and gives a big thumbs up: featuring Wystan Barboozul as Wystan Barboozul, The Bearded Boy.

Then the camera focuses on a huge pair of shoes and slowly pans up,