Shrinking Violet Definitely Needs A Dog Read online

  LOU KUENZLER was brought up on a remote sheep farm on the edge of Dartmoor. After a childhood of sheep, ponies, chickens and dogs, Lou moved to Northern Ireland to study theatre. She went on to work professionally as a theatre director, university drama lecturer and workshop leader in communities, schools and colleges. Lou now teaches adults and children how to write stories and is lucky enough to write her own books, too. She has written children’s rhymes, plays and novels as well as stories for CBeebies. Lou lives in London with her family, two cats and a dog.

  www.loukuenzler.com

  To Duesi because you DEFINITELY love that dog! LK

  Contents

  Cover

  Half Title Page

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgements

  Look Out for Violet’s Next Adventure…

  Copyright

  My name is Violet Potts.

  This story begins as I was being responsible and helping with the washing up.

  “See?” I said, scraping a lump of spinach stew into the recycling bin. “This family needs a dog!”

  I’d been saying this for weeks – ever since my Uncle Max helped me raise enough money to adopt an endangered Siberian wolf cub. I didn’t actually get to keep the wolf cub, of course. He had to stay in the frozen forests of Siberia. But I did get a cuddly wolf cub toy and a framed certificate saying:

  Uncle Max is the most uncle in the whole world, but even he can’t get me a real wolf to keep. (Boris wouldn’t like to live in our small terrace house at Number 25, King’s Park Road – especially as I don’t even have my own bedroom. He’d have to share with Tiffany, my terrible teenage sister, too.) But – and here’s the really bit – Uncle Max did say he might, possibly, perhaps one day get me a puppy.

  All I have to do is convince Mum and Dad to agree.

  “A dog would definitely eat up all these lovely, yummy leftovers,” I said, scraping another plate of sloppy spinach into the bin.

  Of course, there is nothing lovely or yummy about spinach stew – it is the meal of all the healthy, soggy, green meals Mum cooks. But being nice about Mum’s cooking was all part of my brilliant plan to make her say yes to a dog.

  “No!” said Mum (just as firmly as the four zillion other times she had already said NO! that week). “We are NOT getting a dog!”

  “If Violet gets a dog, I should get new hair straighteners,” said Tiffany.

  I stared at her with my mouth open. What did have to do with anything? Tiffany is always thinking about her hair. If she was offered the very last seat on the very last lifeboat of a sinking ship, she’d stop to straighten her hair first.

  “Honestly,” I said. “You’re the only person who minds if your hair is frizzy—”

  “It isn’t shrieked Tiffany.

  “But a dog would be for the whole family,” I carried on. “We could all get fit and healthy taking it for walks.” I smiled at Mum. She is very keen on us being fit and healthy.

  “If Violet’s getting a dog and Tiff’s getting hair thingies,” grinned Dad, “I should get that new Future Screen TV with the inbuilt 749XG memory chip.” I had idea what he was talking about, but Dad loves gadgets and technology (almost as much as Mum loves organic vegetables and Tiffany loves her hair).

  “Violet is not getting a dog,” repeated Mum.

  “She wouldn’t look after it, anyway,” said Tiffany. “She ruined my best black top when I lent it to her for Halloween!”

  “Not this again,” I groaned. “It’s spring. Halloween was months ago. How was I supposed to know Riley Paterson would throw a pot of bogey-green paint at me?”

  “Because you two are always fighting,” said Tiffany.

  This is true. Riley Paterson is the meanest boy in my whole class. He put a frog in my best friend Nisha’s witch hat, so I might have known he’d have something horrible planned for me. I should have said trick instead of treat. But I wasn’t going tell Tiffany she was right.

  “You’re so irresponsible, Violet,” she huffed. “If you can’t even look after a T-shirt, how could you look after a dog?”

  “It’s not the same thing,” I said. “You can’t love a T-shirt.”

  “I can,” sighed Tiffany.

  “A T-shirt isn’t ,” I said. “It doesn’t go for walks or play fetch.” I spun round and shook a sticky spinach spoon at her. “A T-shirt can’t bark at burglars or… Whoops! Look out, Tiff!”

  A blob of spinach shot off the end of the spoon. It and landed, plop, on the front of Tiffany’s new favourite T-shirt. It was white.

  Except now there was a big green of spinach right in the middle.

  “I’m so sorry!” I cried. The spinach was EXACTLY the same colour as the bogey-green Halloween paint.

  “Gross!” screamed Tiffany.

  “Careful,” shouted Mum as I tossed the spoon into the sink. Another blob of spinach flew through the air. It landedon the wall and dribbled slowly down into the hamster cage on the counter below.

  Hannibal, my podgy hamster, leapt up and stared at me through the bars. Green spinach was dripping off his ears.

  “See,” said Tiffany. “Violet can’t even be trusted with a hamster.”

  “Or with a spoon,” laughed Dad, who always makes jokes at the wrong time.

  Mum shot him a look. “Better check the messages on my phone,” he said and hurried out of the room.

  I tried to follow, but Mum spun round. “Honestly, Violet. Tiffany’s right. You really do need to show more responsibility. How could you control a dog if you can’t even control yourself?”

  “It was an accident,” I mumbled as Tiffany stormed past me to go and change her T-shirt. My heart was pounding. Operation Get a Dog was going well.

  “I really can be responsible,” I said. “I’ll show you. I promise.”

  “You can make a start by getting on with your homework,” said Mum, scrubbing at the spinach stain on the wall.

  I had a long list of terrifically tough spellings to learn for the next day.

  “I’ll test you in a minute,” said Mum.

  Oh dear. I knew n-e-c-e-s-s-a-r-y was a bit wobbly and Mum would make me write it out ten times if I got it wrong.

  Luckily, Dad saved me.

  “Come and see this text, Josie,” he said, calling to Mum from the lounge. “Max wants to visit. He says he has some wonderful news for us.”

  “Uncle Max?” I pricked up my ears. “Wonderful news? I – I think that might be to do with me.”

  “Homework, Violet,” said Mum firmly as she left the room.

  But I couldn’t think about spellings any more.

  Uncle Max was coming to visit. He had Could it be? I didn’t dare to hope… But might it be…? A dog? My dog!

  Excitement bubbled inside me like a fizzy drink. Even my toes started to tingle.

  “Uh oh.”

  I felt a feeling in my head, as if I were spinning on a fairground waltzer.

  I grabbed the edge of the kitchen table, sending a
pile of clean cutlery to the floor. I tried to steady myself. But it was too late.

  “Violet will be thrilled,” I heard Mum say from the lounge.

  And that was it.

  I was shrinking … FAST!

  I was shrinking so quickly it felt like I was riding a roller coaster – which is funny because the very first time I ever shrank I was in the queue at a theme park. One minute I was a normal ten-year-old girl, enough to ride on my dream roller coaster. The next minute, by the time I reached the measuring stick, POP! I was no bigger than a frozen fish finger.

  I’ve shrunk lots of times since then and it always starts with the same tiny tingling in my toes.

  . And I’m plunging towards the floor.

  “Whoa!” I cried now as the top of the kitchen table, a shelf of cookery books and the legs of a chair whizzed past.

  I landed amongst the cutlery I had knocked to the floor.

  “Ouch!” The sharp prongs of one of the forks poked me in the bum as if I were a juicy meatball. I rolled over next to a silver teaspoon the same size as me.

  I rubbed my sore bum and lay beside the teaspoon. We were like two tiny patients in a row of hospital beds.

  “What are you here for? A bent handle?” I giggled.

  At least no one else was in the kitchen. I was worried Mum might have heard the clatter of cutlery and come to see what was going on.

  She has NO idea that I sometimes shrink. No one in my family does. Except Gran – she used to be a shrinker too, when she was a girl. She says the world’s not ready for our little secret yet. I think she’s right.

  I did try and tell Mum and Dad what had happened when I shrank that first time at the theme park. They just got cross and said I was making it up.

  But I’m not making it up. Whenever I get overexcited, I shrink to the size of a lollipop.

  No wonder I shrank this time, I thought as I crawled out from the cutlery. What could be more than Uncle Max coming to visit? Especially if he might really, truly bring me a puppy of my own.

  Could this be With Uncle Max’s help, would Mum and Dad finally agree?

  If only I could get to the lounge and hear what they were saying.

  Just one small problem. Moving around a house isn’t easy when you are the size of a teaspoon. I would have to heave myself up the steps in the corridor like a mini mountaineer.

  Luckily, Tiffany had dropped one of her sparkly earrings on the carpet. It was her favourite – a silver moon. She’d be glad that I’d found it. It might even make up for the soggy spinach on her T-shirt. But for now, I dug the sharp stud into the stairs and used it as a tiny pickaxe to pull myself up. I clung to it like one of those sharp pointy tools climbers stick into the rocks and ice.

  My legs dangled beneath me as if I were hanging from a real precipice like the ones I’ve seen on my favourite TV show:

  “Here I am in the frozen mountains,” I whispered, pretending I was Stella Lightfoot, the super-cool presenter who is always jumping out of helicopters and scrambling over rocks. I imagined I had my own mini camera crew following me as I climbed Mount Corridor-Steps.

  “What a view,” I giggled, wishing my best friend, Nisha, could be here – she loves playing imaginary games and she thinks Stella Lightfoot is really pretty.

  Of course, if Nisha were here, I’d have to hide from her too. Even though she’s my best friend, she has no idea about my shrinking either.

  Maybe we could play a Stella Lightfoot game when I grew back to full size. Maybe I would even have my own puppy by then. Maybe we could pretend it was a husky dog to pull us through the snow. Maybe… But I was getting carried away.

  For now, I had to get to the lounge and find out what Mum and Dad were saying.

  “On through the GREAT white wilderness,” I smiled as I trekked across the fluffy carpet in the hall. Taking one tiny step after another, I made my way towards the lounge door. As I got closer, I could hear Dad talking.

  It took me a moment to realize he must be on the phone.

  “Wonderful… That’s great news, Max,” he said. “Yes… Josie and I are both very excited… Of course, not a word. See you Saturday. Bye…”

  Through the crack in the open door, I saw Dad put his mobile phone on the coffee table.

  “So?” said Mum. “What did Max say?” She sounded excited.

  But Dad put his finger to his lips. “Best not to be overheard,” he said. “Let me close the door.”

  I made a dash forward. If I could sneak into the room and hide under the sofa, I could hear what they were going to say. But I was too late. Dad stepped forward and…

  “Yikes!” I jumped backwards and rolled away across the hall carpet as he closed the door between us.

  “Phew!” Just in time. Dad hadn’t seen me down here, of course. But if he’d slammed the door on me, I’d have been squashed flat as a biscuit.

  “Max wants to keep everything secret,” I heard him say, from inside the lounge. Then his voice dropped to a .

  I knew I shouldn’t be listening, but it was like peeking in the wardrobe where Mum and Dad hide the Christmas presents. I just couldn’t resist…

  If I had been just a centimetre smaller, I might have been able to underneath the lounge door. Instead, I was stuck in the hall, with my ear pressed against the wood. I couldn’t catch half of what Dad was saying, just the odd whispered word. It was like trying to listen to a radio when it’s not properly tuned in.

  “hhh adorable hhh if we agree hhh surprise for Violet hh tell her himself when he comes hhh ”

  “But that’s lovely,” said Mum. She really did sound pleased. Did that mean she had agreed with Uncle Max’s suggestion?

  I couldn’t catch the rest of what she was saying either.

  “hhh big responsibility”

  I heard footsteps and the door handle turned above me. Quick as a mouse, I across the hall and shot behind the umbrella stand.

  As Mum and Dad came out of the lounge, I crouched in the shadows trying to make sense of what I had heard.

  Uncle Max had a surprise. A surprise for me. It was something adorable … but also a big responsibility. Surely that could only mean ONE wonderful, thing?

  It was all I could do not to leap up and down and cheer. I was doing a secret, silent mini tap dance of when the letter box on the front door rattled above me.

  I strained my neck to look up as a leaflet shot through the slot, floated over the umbrella stand and drifted past my head. It was an advertisement of some kind. There was a picture of a cute tabby kitten and a gorgeous black and white sheepdog puppy with a plaster on its leg.

  For a second, I thought I must be dreaming. But there it was, floating through the air! A picture of a puppy at the moment I was thinking about my very own dog. Was this some kind of sign?

  As the advert landed on the doormat, I peered round the edge of the umbrella stand and read the big blue writing on the front:

  “What’s that?” said Dad, as Mum stepped forward to pick up the leaflet.

  I jumped back into the shadows.

  “Something about helping to walk rescue dogs,” she said, glancing at the paper.

  “Better not let Violet see that,” laughed Dad. “She’ll want to adopt them all.”

  “She’ll be too busy. Her hands will be full in the next few weeks,” said Mum. She opened the front door and tossed the advert outside into the paper recycling bin. “It’s junk mail. We don’t need it.”

  What did she mean, my hands would be full? With what? I felt a HUGE grin spread across my tiny face.

  There was a jolt in my neck. I realized it wasn’t just my smile that was growing big…

  I shot back to full size, sending umbrellas tumbling like pick-up sticks across the hall.

  “Violet!” screamed Mum, leaping into the air. “What are you doing there?”

  “Nothing,” I mumbled, poking my head out from behind Dad’s raincoat. I had shot up in amongst the coat rack as I grew. It’s one of the strange things about
shrinking: I never know when I’m going to grow back to full size. Now my left foot was stuck in the umbrella stand.

  “You didn’t half make me jump,” gasped Dad, who was nearly at the top of the stairs. “Were you hiding?”

  “Er … no,” I said as Mum shut the front door. I noticed my book bag hanging on the peg beside Dad’s raincoat. “I was just … er … checking if I had any extra spellings. But I don’t … so I’ll get ready for bed now.”

  I squeezed past Dad and charged up the stairs before they could ask me any more questions.

  By the time Mum came to check on me, I was tucked up reading my Bumper Book Of Dogs. I had already put my clothes in the laundry bin, brushed my teeth and washed behind my ears. I had to do everything I could to show Mum and Dad that I was totally, completely responsible enough to look after a puppy the moment it arrived.

  The really thing was making sure I didn’t get overexcited and shrink again in the next few days. Nobody would let me get a dog if they discovered I’m sometimes small enough to be gobbled up like a treat. I wasn’t worried about that, though – I knew I’d be able to train my puppy the minute we met.

  Every time Mum and Dad mentioned Uncle Max’s visit over the next few days I had to pinch myself and think of something horrible like spelling tests or being desperate for the loo when Tiffany’s hogging the bathroom. It wasn’t easy. Mum and Dad kept dropping hints, saying I was going to get a lovely surprise and winking at each other.

  By breakfast on Saturday, I couldn’t stand it any longer. It was the day of Uncle Max’s visit.

  “Give me one little clue about the surprise,” I begged.

  Dad looked up from fiddling with the new fancy toaster he had bought. It was supposed to make toast. At the moment, all it was doing was shooting out slices of burnt black charcoal every two minutes.

  “Here’s a good clue,” he said, fanning away a plume of thick grey smoke. He started to sing a funny little tune.