Twisty Christmas Tales

By aliciaponder, Eileen Mueller and Peter Friend

What will Santa put under your tree this Christmas? A present that growls? A battered old bike? Or wings to fly?
Twisty Christmas Tales —ten crazy Christmas adventures for the whole family! Christmas in outer space or at the beach, carolling gone wrong, a strange elf creating havoc in Santa’s workshop, monsters running amok, and a junior mad scientist who turns Christmas into chaos.
Come along for the sleigh ride of your life, as these Twisty Tales weave their festive magic .
This Christmas anthology contains ten fantasy and science fiction short stories for children of all ages, written by three New Zealand award-winning authors, Peter Friend, Eileen Mueller, Alicia Ponder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phantom
• Release date: Dec 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9780473272562

Book preview

Twisty Christmas Tales

—Festive Short Stories for Children of All Ages—

Published by Phantom Feather Press

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 by Peter Friend, Eileen Mueller, Alicia Ponder

http://phantomfeatherpress.wordpress.com

[e-mail]

Dragon art © 2013 by Geoff Popham

ISBN mobi 978-0-473-27241-8

ISBN epub 978-0-473-27256-2

ISBN PDF 978-0-473-27242-5

Christmas in Space was first published in Great Mates: 30 New Zealand Stories for Children (Random House New Zealand, 2001)

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons dead or living is coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the authors, except for brief quotations used in reviews.

Twisty Christmas Tales

Ten crazy Christmas adventures for the whole family! Christmas in outer space or at the beach, carolling gone wrong, a strange elf creating havoc in Santa’s workshop, monsters running amok, and a junior mad scientist who turns Christmas into chaos.

***

For Santa’s little helpers, everywhere.

Thank you for making dreams come true.

Table of Contents

The Red Giant

Christmas in Space

Fairy Lights

Frankie’s Christmas Letters

Rumbled

White Christmas

Carolling

Kahi Kiwi’s Christmas Wish

Dear Santa

Legless

About the Authors

Acknowledgements

The Red Giant

Peter Friend & Alicia Ponder

A terrible howling and squealing and roaring came closer and closer down the corridor. Isabella hid under her bed sheets.

Her bedroom door burst open, and in ran a vampire, a sabre toothed mermaid, and an ogre.

Hide me, Isabella! howled Wendell the vampire, and dived under her bed.

It’s horrible, Isabella! squealed Aqua the sabre toothed mermaid, and squelched under her bed.

Save us, Isabella! roared Grit the ogre. He tried to hide under the bed too, but there was no room left.

Isabella shivered. What’s wrong? What are you all so scared of?

A big red giant’s on the roof, said Grit. It’s trying to get into the house. Please, scare it away!

I’ve only been a ghost for a few months, said Isabella. I can’t scare away a giant. Anyway, it will never get into the house.

What if it squeezes down the chimney? squealed Aqua.

Maybe you could block the chimney with your leaky bathtub, Isabella suggested.

Aqua nodded and ran out the door.

Isabella and the other monsters heard the giant banging on the roof. They heard a sound like someone dragging a bathtub across the floor. Then silence.

Aqua ran back in and dived under the bed. The giant is squeezy and stretchy, she squealed.