Loudmouth Louis - Anne Fine [0]
Loudmouth Louis
Anne Fine was born and educated in the Midlands, and now lives in County Durham. She has written numerous highly acclaimed and prize-winning books for children and adults. Her novel The Tulip Touch won the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year Award; Goggle-Eyes won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the Carnegie Medal, and was adapted for television by the BBC; Flour Babies won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year Award; Bill’s New Frock won a Smarties Prize, and Madame Doubtfire has become a major feature film.
www.annefine.co.uk
Some other books by Anne Fine
Books for Younger Readers
Care of Henry
Countdown
Design-a-Pra m
The Diary of a Killer Cat
The Haunting of Pip Parker
Jennifer’s Diary
Notso Hotso
Only a Show
Press Play
Roll Over Roly
The Same Old Story Every Year
Scaredy-Cat
Stranger Danger?
The Worst Child I Ever Had
Books for Middle-range Readers
The Angel of Nitshill Road
Anneli The Art Hater
Bill’s New Frock
The Chicken Gave It To Me
The Country Pancake
Crummy Mummy and Me
How To Write Really Badly
A Pack of Liars
A Sudden Glow of Gold
A Sudden Puff of Glittering Smoke
A Sudden Swirl of Icy Wind
ANNE FINE
Loudmouth Louis
Illustrated by Kate Aldous
PUFFIN BOOKS
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published 1998
19
Text copyright © Anne Fine, 1998
Illustrations copyright © Kate Aldous, 1998
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the
publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-14-193637-6
Contents
1 Silence is Golden
2 Fifty Different Ways to be Told to be Quiet
3 Worry on My Mind
4 Don’t Mind My Dad
5 In Training
6 A New Manager
7 Sponsorship
8 Fresh Start, Fresh Colours
9 Interesting …
10 Fly on the Wall
1 Silence is Golden
IT WAS MY own fault, I admit.
I could have been in the group that chose to organize the Raffle. But I was too busy chatting to Melanie to bother to put up my hand.
And I could have joined the group Miss Sparkes said could run the Bring-And-Buy Stall. But I was leaning across to whisper something to George, so I missed that chance too.
And then Steve and Arif and Arianne finally persuaded Miss Sparkes to let them run a Who-Can-Have-Wet-Sponges-Thrown-At-Them-Longest Competition. And I’d have joined up with them, but she was still mad at me for chattering in class, so she wouldn’t put my name down.
She just set her timer as usual.
“Silence is golden, Louis Todd,” she said. “If you can button your loud mouth for five whole minutes, I’ll write your name down. And if you can’t, I won’t.”
I couldn’t. So she didn’t.
So I was still sulking when she wrote down the names of people who wanted to do the Biscuit-Making. And the Guess-The-Number-Of-Lollipops-In-The-Jar. And the Great-Big-Used-Book Sale.
The trouble