My Super Sister and the Birthday Party Read online

  I decided to try a different approach.

  I chose the teddy bear that was sitting on Saffie’s window ledge. His name is Howard and he’s a sensible brown bear dressed in red dungarees and a little bow tie. Toys tend to have their own personalities (as well as being influenced by whoever brings them to life), and the more a toy gets animated then the stronger its personality becomes.

  Howard used to be mine, which Mum says is the reason he’s so level-headed. He’s always sensible – even when Saffie threatens to de-animate him if he doesn’t let his hair down. In fact, once, when Saffie brought him to life and gave him some rice to throw down at Dad (who was mowing the lawn), he told her she was very silly and actually refused to do it.

  I knew he was the perfect choice for what I had in mind.

  This is the bit that’s difficult to describe – what it actually feels like when you make something come alive. All I can say is that it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t feel unnatural, and when I was little I couldn’t understand why everyone else couldn’t do it too. It’s really just a case of looking at an object and then sort of mentally zapping it into life. Of course the zapping is the bit that’s difficult to describe. Granny says it uses a very special part of our brains, a part that just doesn’t function that way in normal humans. (Dad calls it the wacky part, though not in front of Granny.)

  As I focused really hard on Saffie’s teddy I felt that funny ‘ping’ inside my head, and the next moment he was folding his arms together and glaring severely at both dolls. ‘Cut it out, both of you!’ he growled in a voice that made them jump. He stayed standing on the window ledge as he addressed Saffie sternly. ‘Now just you listen to me, young lady . . . We all know how upset you are about Rosie moving away, but she’s only moved to the other side of town. You’ll still be able to see her.’

  Saffie looked at me rather than her teddy as she replied, ‘But we won’t be able to visit each other without a grown­up and we won’t be able to play in our special den any more.’ She and Rosie had converted the old garden shed in Rosie’s garden into a den, and they used to spend hours playing there together.

  I did feel sorry for her then because I knew how much she loved that den.

  ‘Maybe the new family will have children too,’ I said in an attempt to cheer her up. Rosie’s mum hadn’t known if they did or not – in fact she’d hardly known anything at all about the people who were buying her house. Dad says that’s quite unusual. (Dad is an estate agent and he’d been a bit miffed that Rosie’s parents hadn’t asked him to sell their house so that he could personally vet our new neighbours.)

  ‘I don’t care if they do have children,’ Saffie declared huffily.

  ‘Well, you should. They might let you play in their shed with them if you ask them nicely.’

  ‘It’s not up to them,’ my sister said angrily. ‘That shed is Rosie’s and mine. It’s our secret den and no one else is allowed inside unless we say so.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, starting to get impatient. ‘Listen. The new people are moving in this afternoon. I’m going round to say hello to them later with Mum. Why don’t you come too?’

  But my little sister just narrowed her eyes and stubbornly shook her head. She can be very, very stubborn when she wants to be. ‘I told Rosie I didn’t want her to move away,’ she declared, at which point Elvira lunged at Dorothy and gave her long woolly hair a sharp tug.

  Dorothy yelped but immediately recovered enough to grab a teacup to hurl at Elvira, who had climbed on to Saffie’s beanbag chair, then up on to the window ledge to hide behind Howard. Just as Dorothy hurled the cup at her, Howard ducked and the cup hit Elvira smack in the face. Elvira started wailing and I rushed over to the window ledge to pick her up before Mum heard.

  That’s when I looked out of the window and spotted a boy my own age in the neighbouring garden, staring up at us. And judging by the look of disbelief on his face I was pretty sure he’d seen everything.

  There are hundreds of beautiful dresses in every colour of the rainbow — sewn with magic thread. Take a look, try one on — and wait for the magic to whisk you away on an amazing adventure!

  Ava is looking for her cat when she finds Marietta’s mysterious shop. She tries on a perfectly fitting gold and emerald princess dress and whizzes through a secret mirror — to fairytale land! Will she get there in time to be a bridesmaid at Cinderella’s wedding?

  There are hundreds of beautiful dresses in every colour of the rainbow — sewn with magic thread. Take a look, try one on — and wait for the magic to whisk you away on an amazing adventure!

  Ava has just discovered the enchantment of Marietta’s special dressing-up shop. Now she can’t wait to try on a twinkling tutu with matching ballet slippers and pirouette back toVictorian times. Once there she finds she has an important part to play in making a girl’s ballerina dreams come true!

  There are hundreds of beautiful dresses in every colour of the rainbow — sewn with magic thread. Take a look, try one on — and wait for the magic to whisk you away on an amazing adventure!

  When Ava puts on a sparkling trapeze outfit with a dazzling butterfly tiara, she is transported back in time to a travelling circus. Ava loves the clever circus stunts and the beautiful costumes, but she’s worried about a baby elephant that is meant to perform tricks. Can Ava reunite the baby with its mother before the cruel animal trainer finds out?

  There’s a secret world at the bottom of the sea!

  Rani came to Tingle Reef when she was a baby mermaid – she was found fast asleep in a seashell, and nobody knows where she came from.

  Now strange things keep happening to her – almost as if by magic. What’s going on? Rani’s pet sea horse, Roscoe, Octavius the octopus and a scary sea-witch help her find out . . .

  Gwyneth Rees is half Welsh and half English and grew up in Scotland. She went to Glasgow University and qualified as a doctor in 1990. She is a child and adolescent psychiatrist but has now stopped practising so that she can write full-time. She is the author of many bestselling books, including the Fairies series, the Cosmo series and the Marietta’s Magic Dress Shop series, as well as several books for older readers. She lives near London with her husband, Robert, and their daughters, Eliza and Lottie.

  Visit www.gwynethrees.com

  Books by Gwyneth Rees

  My Super Sister

  My Super Sister and the Birthday Party

  The Magic Princess Dress

  The Twinkling Tutu

  The Butterfly Tiara

  Mermaid Magic

  Fairy Dust

  Fairy Treasure

  Fairy Dreams

  Fairy Gold

  Fairy Rescue

  Fairy Secrets

  Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze

  Cosmo and the Great Witch Escape

  Cosmo and the Secret Spell

  For older readers

  The Mum Hunt

  The Mum Detective

  The Mum Mystery

  My Mum’s from Planet Pluto

  The Making of May

  Something Secret

  First published 2013 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2013 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-1604-9 EPUB

  Text copyright © Gwyneth Rees 2013

  Illustrations copyright © Ella Okstad 2013

  The right of Gwyneth Rees and Ella Okstad to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording o
r otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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

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