The Boy in the Dress. David Walliams

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Название The Boy in the Dress
Автор произведения David Walliams
Жанр Учебная литература
Серия
Издательство Учебная литература
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007302086



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       Copyright

      First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins

      Children’s Books 2008 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

      The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollinschildrensbooks.co.uk

      © David Walliams 2008

      David Walliams and Quentin Blake 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 nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 e-books.

      Ebook edition © AUGUST 2012 ISBN: 9780007302086

      Version 2019-07-17

       Dedication

       For Eddie, What joy you have given us all.

      Contents

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Chapter 1 - No Hugging

       Chapter 2 - Fat Dad

       Chapter 3 - Under the Mattress

       Chapter 4 - Wanting to Disappear

       Chapter 5 - Just Doodling

       Chapter 6 - Forever and a Moment

       Chapter 7 - Watching the Curtain Edges Grow Light

       Chapter 8 - Lying on the Carpet with Lisa

       Chapter 9 - Bonjour, Denise

       Chapter 10 - Pickled Onion Monster Munch

       Chapter 11 - “These high heels are killing me”

       Chapter 12 - Another World

       Chapter 13 - Double French

       Chapter 14 - Silence like Snow

       Chapter 15 - There Was Nothing More to Say

       Chapter 16 - With or Without the Dress

       Chapter 17 - Maudlin Street

       Chapter 18 - A Thousand Smiles

       Chapter 19 - Dragged in the Mud

       Chapter 20 - Blouse and Skirt

       Chapter 21 - Big Hairy Hands

       Chapter 22 - One Thing Left to Do

       E-book Extra

       About the Publisher

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       1 No Hugging

      Dennis was different.

      When he looked in the mirror he saw an ordinary twelve-year-old boy. But he felt different–his thoughts were full of colour and poetry, though his life could be very boring.

      The story I am going to tell you begins here, in Dennis’s ordinary house on an ordinary street in an ordinary town. His house was nearly exactly the same as all the others in the street. One house had double glazing, another did not. One had a gravel drive, another had crazy paving. One had a Vauxhall Cavalier in the drive, another a Vauxhall Astra. Tiny differences that only really pointed out the sameness of everything.

      It was all so ordinary, something extraordinary just had to happen.

      Dennis lived with his dad–who did have a name, but Dennis just called him Dad, so I will too–and his older brother John, who was fourteen. Dennis found it frustrating that his brother would always be two years older than him, and bigger, and stronger.

      Dennis’s mum had left home a couple of years ago. Before that, Dennis used to creep out of his room and sit at the top of the stairs and listen to his mum and dad shout at each other until one day the shouting stopped.

      She was gone.

      Dad banned John and Dennis from ever mentioning Mum again. And soon after she left, he went around the house and took down all the photographs of her and burnt them in a big bonfire.

      But Dennis managed to save one.

      One solitary photograph escaped the flames, dancing up into the air from the heat of the fire, before floating through the smoke and onto the