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Zusatztext "Endlessly funny. . . . A roller-coaster ride of a story, full of humor and even wisdom."-- Kirkus Reviews Informationen zum Autor BRUCE COVILLE is the author of over 100 books for children and young adults, including the international bestseller My Teacher is an Alien, the Unicorn Chronicles series, and the much-beloved Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher. His work has appeared in a dozen languages and won children's choice awards in a dozen states. Before becoming a full time writer Bruce was a teacher, a toymaker, a magazine editor, a gravedigger, and a cookware salesman. He is also the creator of Full Cast Audio, an audiobook company devoted to producing full cast, unabridged recordings of material for family listening and has produced over a hundred audiobooks, directing and/or acting in most of them. Bruce lives in Syracuse, New York, with his wife, illustrator and author Katherine Coville. Klappentext Jennifer Murdley, a homely fifth-grader who would give anything to be beautiful, accidentally stumbles into a magic shop and purchases a very ugly toad. The toad, it turns out, can talk and ends up getting Jennifer into the worst trouble of her life. This madcap, head-spinning adventure is also a thought-provoking story about the nature of true beauty. Leseprobe ONE The Kid in the Plain Brown Wrapper If Jennifer Murdley hadn’t been forced to wear her brother’s underpants to school, the whole thing might never have happened. But when she walked into the laundry room on the morning of October 13th, she found her father pouring liquid detergent onto a load of clothes that included every pair of underwear she owned. “Dad!” she screamed. “Wait!” She was too late. The tub was filling, her underwear was soggy and soapy, and there was no chance of getting any of it dry before she had to leave for school. “Don’t worry,” said Mr. Murdley, holding up a stack of neatly folded underpants, “you can wear a pair of these!” “You have got to be kidding! Those belong to Skippy!” The conversation that followed wasn’t pretty. The bottom line had been that Jennifer was going to school, and she was going to wear underwear, even if it did belong to her brother. Although she promised Skippy to keep it a secret, Jennifer confided the embarrassing truth to one person—her best friend, Ellen. Ellen, not unnaturally, thought it was funny. So she told Annette. Annette told Maya. Maya told Sharra. And Sharra, as could have been expected, told the world. By recess every boy in the fifth grade knew Jennifer’s secret. They chased her around the playground, chanting, “Jennifer Murdley went to France, wearing her brother’s underpants,” while Sharra and her friends stood in a circle, giggling and pointing. As if that weren’t bad enough, when Jennifer passed Skippy in the hallway later that day, as her class was leaving art and his was entering, he hissed, “You die, creepazoid.” The day reached a new low when Jennifer’s teacher, Mrs. Hopwell, assigned an essay on “My Favorite Pet.” Jennifer had four problems with the essay: First, she still hadn’t finished her last writing assignment, a report on Smokey Hollow’s only tourist attraction, the Applegate Folk Museum. In fact, she was supposed to visit the museum that afternoon for some final research. Second, the new topic just didn’t interest her. It wasn’t that she didn’t like writing. Jennifer loved to write; she just hated wasting her time on stuff that didn’t come from inside her. Third, she didn’t even have a pet, which was one of the things that made the topic so uninteresting. F...
