The Flower Power Collection
Three of Jean Ure’s best-loved stories in a bumper 3-in-1 edition – PASSION FLOWER, SHRINKING VIOLET and PUMPKIN PIE.In PASSION FLOWER, Stephanie, a hip fourteen year old, and Samantha, her ten-year-old sister, are stuck in the middle of their parents’ arguments. When Dad suggests going on a summer holiday, they jump at the chance.In SHRINKING VIOLET, twins Violet and Lily lead very different lives; Lily has friends and goes to parties and Violet stays at home, writing to her pen pal. But when Violet borrows bits of Lily’s life to make herself sound more interesting, it’s bound to lead to trouble…In PUMPKIN PIE, Polly is stuck in the middle of a beautiful, fashion-conscious older sister and a high-achieving younger brother grabbing all the attention. Polly never wanted to turn food into her enemy, but when Dad starts calling her Plumpkin she doesn’t have a choice…
Читать The Flower Power Collection онлайн беплатно
JEAN URE
Illustrated by Karen Donnelly
HarperCollins Children’s Books An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London, SE1 9GF
Shrinking Violet first published in Great Britain by Collins in 2002 Passion Flower first published in Great Britain by Collins in 2003 Pumpkin Pie first published in Great Britain by Collins in 2002
First published in this three-in-one edition by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2006
Text © Jean Ure 2002, 2003, 2002
Illustrations © Karen Donnelly 2002, 2003, 2002
The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007201556
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007402755 Version: 2016-12-06
Contents
For my niece, Anna Ure, and for Susanna Buxton, who both helped.
I am a twin. Unfortunately! It is not always easy, being a twin. People expect you to:
look alike
think alike dress alike talk alike.
They also expect you to:
sit together
walk together play together and LOVE EACH OTHER TO BITS.
Some twins, I suppose, might do all these things. We don’t! We try our hardest not to.
My twin is called Lily. I am called Violet.
Spot the difference! We are not identical. If anyone thinks we are, it is because they have not looked properly. “Oh! (they go) They are like two peas in a pod! How ever do you tell them apart?”
LOOK AT THE PICTURES. That is what I say.
Lily says you would have to be blind to mistake her for me. But just to make sure, we always try to wear different clothes. When we can! Like, for instance, Lily will wear black jeans and I will wear red ones. She will wear an orange top and I will wear a white one. We can’t do this at school because of the uniform, but most people at school have learnt to tell us apart. They know that Lily is the LOUD one and I am the quiet one. It’s only, sometimes, new teachers that get us in a muddle. But not for long. If one of us is shrieking, they know at once that it is Lily!
Dad calls her Lily Loudmouth because of all the noise she makes. He claps his hands to his ears and goes, “Here comes Lily Loudmouth!” She loves to dance, and sing along to her favourite music. I do, too, but I only do it when I am at home. Lily does it all over. At home, at school, in the street, in the shopping mall… everywhere! I would be too embarrassed.
Dad teases me and says I am a shrinking violet. Mum says I live too much in Lily’s shadow. Lily just says I am a twonk.
Twinkle twonkle, little Vi, How I really wonder why Lily’s brash and you are shy!
This is a rhyme that I made up, but it is in my Secret Filofax that I keep locked with a key. The key hangs round my neck on a special silver chain. I wouldn’t want anyone reading the things that I keep in my Filofax! Also, I hate it if people call me Vi. I only did it for the rhyme. Violet is bad enough, but Vi is the pits.
The reason we’ve got these weird names is that Mum is a huge gardening person and her two most favourite flowers just happen to be the dear little shrinking violet and a great big blustering lily thing that is covered in spots and grows about eight feet tall.
How she got to be Lily and I got to be Violet was just a mistake. I was supposed to be Lily! I was born first (by five whole minutes) and L comes before V in the alphabet so Lily was going to be me. But what with us being twins, and all babies looking the same anyway, Mum went and got us mixed up. Our nan – Big Nan – had knitted this cute little violet suit for one of us and a sweet little white one for the other, and Mum dressed us in the wrong ones! The only way that she could tell which of us was which when we were first born was by this brown birthmark thingie, in other words spot, that Lily has on her bottom, if you will excuse the expression. It is just as well we have now grown up to look so different because who would want to keep gazing at Lily’s, pardon me, bottom all the time? Ugh! Yuck! What a sight!
On the day of the christening, Mum says she was in such a flap, “I couldn’t remember which of you had the spot on her bot!”
