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    My Pa The Polar Bear
    My Pa The Polar Bear
    My Pa The Polar Bear
    Ebook128 pages1 hour

    My Pa The Polar Bear

    By Jackie French and Stephen Michael King

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    About this ebook

    Find out just how wacky some families can be in the eighth book of this hilarious series.
    Fuzz and his family live at the zoo. Fuzz's dad is a blood-thirsty tiger, his mum a mud-cake-making rhinoceros, his sister a tap-dancing giraffe and his brothers a pair of somersaulting monkeys. Fuzz makes great pocket-money pretending to be a polar bear, and at the end of each day his family take off their costumes. Well, most of the time, anyway. Fuzz's pa loves being a polar bear so much he wants to be one! And when he wins two tickets for a cruise to the Arctic, things don't quite turn out as planned! Who is the mysterious girl with pointed ears? What are those strange jingle bells Fuzz keeps hearing? How can two part-time polar bears cope with real ones? Will Fuzz and Pa have to eat raw fish forever? And do reindeer really fly ... Find out what happens at the North Pole with Fuzz and his pa on this amazing Arctic adventure in the Wacky Families series. Ages 7-10
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers Australia
    Release dateFeb 1, 2010
    ISBN9780730443896
    My Pa The Polar Bear
    Author

    Jackie French

    Jackie French AM is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the 2014–2015 Australian Children's Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016 Jackie became a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to children's literature and her advocacy for youth literacy. She is regarded as one of Australia's most popular children's authors and writes across all genres — from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction for a variety of age groups. ‘A book can change a child's life. A book can change the world' was the primary philosophy behind Jackie's two-year term as Laureate. jackiefrench.com facebook.com/authorjackiefrench

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    • 1/5
      I can't recommend this book. I've read a few others in the series and thought they were cute and silly. This one started off with a unique "wacky "family that I thought was going to be my favourite of them all. Then it went downhill. Briefly, the book is full of the alarmist global warming nonsense making wild statements about this political topic designed to scare and frighten the audience, small children. Outrageous "facts" are presented and during the story "global warming" is a thing that happens right before your eyes as a massive event. 'nuff said. On top of that a big deal is made of hard it is to find the polar bears because of the white bears against their white environment, but there are so many varying factors, including time of year, that go into what colour a polar bear actually appears to be to the human eye that I found it odd they were never mentioned as ever appearing to be their typical yellow colouring. Lots of bad pseudo-science hidden in a kid's fantasy story.

    Book preview

    My Pa The Polar Bear - Jackie French

    CHAPTER 1

    The Skinniest Bear in the Zoo

    ‘Look at that polar bear, Daddy!’ The little girl licked her ice cream as she peered over the wall at the zoo’s polar bear enclosure. ‘He’s so-o-o sweet!’

    Fuzz gave his best polar bear grin as her dad snapped a photo.

    ‘I thought polar bears were bigger than that,’ added the little girl.

    ‘They usually are,’ said her father. ‘That’s just a young bear. He’s a bit skinny though…he’s not much of a polar bear at all.’

    ‘I think he’s cute,’ decided the little girl, taking another lick of her ice cream.

    Fuzz gritted his teeth. Cute! It was unbearable!

    ‘Can I buy the cute bear an ice cream, Daddy?’ image1

    image 2

    Fuzz looked hopeful. He’d love an ice cream! Especially one that hadn’t been slobbered on! A nice fresh cool ice cream…

    Her dad shook his head. ‘Polar bears don’t like ice cream.’

    ‘What do they like, Daddy?’

    Oh Pizza please, thought Fuzz, pizza with cheese and pineapple! Or with a great big co-o-old hunk of watermelon…’

    ‘They like fish,’ said the little girl’s father.

    ‘Fish and chips?’

    ‘No. Raw fish.’

    ‘Yuck.’ The little girl looked at Fuzz thoughtfully. ‘Can I throw him a raw fish then, Daddy? See? You can buy a fish from that machine for only ten dollars.’

    ‘Very well. It is a special day after all!’

    Fuzz watched as the girl’s father put a ten-dollar note in the zoo’s Fish-for-the-Polar-Bears machine.

    Blip, blop, blap! A large dead fish appeared in the slot. The girl picked it up cautiously. ‘Yuck,’ she said. ‘It stinks!’

    ‘Polar bears like smelly fish,’ her father assured her.

    ‘And it’s got little wriggly things in it!’

    ‘Polar bears like maggots, too.’

    ‘Do they really?’

    Of course polar bears don’t like stinky fish, you dumb kid, thought Fuzz resentfully. Your father doesn’t know anything about polar bears! Polar bears like fresh fish and snow, not zoos and dead fish out of a machine. The only reason that fish has maggots is because the machine’s refrigeration broke down yesterday and no one has worked out how to fix it yet!

    The little girl leant over the wall towards Fuzz, the dead fish in her hand. A few maggots dripped off and wriggled on the ground. ‘The polar bear won’t bite me, will he?’

    ‘No,’ said her father. ‘Not a mingy little bear like that. He couldn’t hurt a fly. You throw him the nice smelly fish and we’ll go and look at the monkeys. Now they’re really interesting…’

    That was it. He’d had it! Mingy little bear, was he? Not as interesting as a monkey, was he!

    He’d show this man and his kid!

    Fuzz rose on his hind legs and waved his paws in the air. ‘Grrrr-rooowl!’ he yelled.

    The girl took a step back. ‘Are you sure he’s safe, Daddy?’

    ‘Of course…’ began her father.

    Fuzz leapt. Up, up, up until he gripped the beams of the enclosure’s roof. And then with a great swing of his legs…

    ‘Daddy, I didn’t know that polar bears could jump…’

    image 3

    Plop! Fuzz landed on the wall of the enclosure, right in front of the girl and her father.

    The man and his daughter stood frozen to the spot. Fuzz grabbed the kid’s ice cream, pulled her father’s belt out from his belly and shoved the dripping mess down the man’s trousers.

    ‘Ggroooowl!!!’ he roared, banging his furry white chest just like that guy in the Tarzan movie. ‘Grrroooo…’

    ‘Ahhhhh!’ The man grabbed his daughter, the ice cream dripping out of his trouser leg. What’s more, the kid had wet her pants in terror, thought Fuzz happily.

    ‘Growwl! And I’m not a bear, you idiot! I’m a boy in a polar bear suit,’ he roared.

    But the man and his daughter had fled.

    Now that, thought Fuzz as he hopped back into the enclosure to wait for the next lot of visitors, was what he called a really great day!

    CHAPTER 2

    The Zoo Family

    Fuzz swept up the last of the rotten fish and shoved them into the bin. Pa gave him five dollars for every raw fish the zoo visitors threw at him. All he had to do was stand there and look cute and hungry, and watch his pocket money sail through the air. image 4

    It was easy work most days. But today those dead fish stank.

    image 5

    Fuzz sighed. Pa and Gran had owned the zoo since before he was born. Pa had been a polar bear nearly that long too, ever since some tourist complained that the zoo didn’t have any polar bears. Pa had simply dressed up in a polar bear suit—and that’s how it all had started!

    The trouble was, Pa liked being a polar bear. He loved being all white and furry. image 6

    And Dad liked being a tiger, and Julie enjoyed being a giraffe, and Mick and Rick loved being monkeys, and Mum just adored being a rhinoceros. (‘It doesn’t matter how big your bum is when you’re a rhino,’ she explained. ‘You never have to diet at all.’ And her horn was really useful when Mick and Rick misbehaved.)

    image 7 It wasn’t really cheating, Pa said, because the signs at the zoo never said it was a real polar bear, or tiger, or rhino, in the cage. And Pa’s way was better too, because no animals had to live in the little cages. As soon as the zoo closed at 5 p.m. everyone just took off their costumes and went home. image 8

    Well, that was what they were supposed to do. Sometimes Fuzz thought that his family preferred being a rhino, a tiger, a giraffe and a pair of monkeys to being human. And Pa was even worse. Nowadays Pa wore his polar bear suit even when he wasn’t in the polar bear enclosure. In fact, Fuzz could hardly remember when he last saw Pa out of his polar bear suit. image 9

    When Gran had been alive she’d made Pa change out of it for dinner. But now Pa just hung around as a polar bear all the time.

    In the school

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