Notso Hotso - Anne Fine [0]
Notso Hotso
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.
Anne Fine was named Children’s Laureate in 2001.
Other books by Anne Fine
Picture books
Poor Monty
Ruggles
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
Loudmouth Louis
Only a Show
Press Play
Roll Over Roly
The Same Old Story Every Year
Scare dy-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
Notso Hotso
Illustrated by Tony Ross
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 by Hamish Hamilton Ltd 2001
Published in Puffin Books 2002
15
Text copyright © Anne Fine, 2001
Illustrations copyright © Tony Ross, 2001
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: 978-0-14-193958-2
Contents
1: How the Horror Began
2: Getting Worse and Worse
3: Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall
4: Talk About Tough
5: Cat Test
6: Fun-Time
1: How the Horror Began
SO SUDDENLY ONE morning I’m like, Scratch-scratch! Scratch-scratch! and can’t stop. It’s disgusting.
Everyone else thinks so too.
‘Anthony, stop doing that.’
‘Would someone please put that pest-ridden dog out?’
‘Knock it off, Anthony!’
Hey! Notso hotso!
Especially for someone like me. I’m not fussy, exactly. (Personally, I’d call it ‘fastidious’, though I know one or two have rather harshly used the word ‘prissy’.) But I’m not one of those
mucky ‘I’m-a-mutt-and-I’ll-scratch-if-I-like’ pups. I suppose I just think the world’s a nicer place for all of us if everyone tries to keep their smells and messes and nasty little personal habits quietly to themselves.
Call me a fuss-budget if you will, but I just like to help to keep things nice.
And skin problems aren’t nice. As fellow sufferers will know, skin problems aren’t something you can forget for the morning. They drive you mad, especially the itchy ones. First you think, if you just scratch this tiny bit here…
Then you think, if you just have a little go at that itsy-bitsy