The Green Stone

By Julio Santos and Patricia Perez Redondo

Hello! My name is Txano, and my twin brother is called Oscar.
Have you ever seen a meteorite crash to Earth? Well, we have! While on an excursion, at the beginning of summer, a huge ball of fire flew across the sky in front of our eyes and crashed into the forest!
Yes, I know we should have run away in the opposite direction, but we didn’t and, instead, went searching for it. And we found it. It was a strange green stone. The mystery hiding behind its glow changed our lives forever.
Why don’t you come with us to discover it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Julio Santos
• Release date: Jul 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463528143

Julio Santos

Julio: Soy informático desde mucho antes de estudiar informática y me encanta la tecnología. Hace unos pocos años, lo dejé todo y me fui a viajar por el mundo con mi familia. Y en uno de esos viajes, mientras conducía aburrido por la pampa argentina, aparecieron Txano y Óscar. No sé de donde vinieron, pero consiguieron cautivarme y a partir de ese momento me dediqué a escribir sus historias mientras Patricia enriquecía mis textos con sus imágenes.Patricia:Soy diseñadora gráfica de vocación y de profesión. Dibujo desde que recuerdo aunque no recuerdo gran parte de lo que he dibujado. Dentro del amplio mundo del diseño y de mis intereses, la ilustración siempre ha ocupado uno de los primeros puestos y cuando Julio me presentó el proyecto de crear juntos una colección de libros infantiles, no pude resistir la tentación e inmediatamente me puse a diseñar los personajes y el universo gráfico de la serie.

Book preview

PresentaciónIntroducciónChapter 1: Hello, my name is Txano!

It was almost midday. I was right next to the kitchen door, and I’d just shot our mother with a bottle of ketchup.

The worst thing was that my brother had just done the same with a bottle of mayo.

But what was really, really bad, was that both of us had hit our target. It wasn’t intentional, but we’d hit a bullseye.

Yes, I know you’re going to tell me that it is not that serious and that a squirt of ketchup or mayonnaise is not lethal. And you’re right! Lethal it wasn’t, but it could result in a level-seven punishment at the very least.

I know all this might sound a bit odd, but I can assure you that we are not mad and we had not mistaken her for a portion of chips. It was all the rain’s fault.

But let me tell you the story from the very beginning. Let’s see… Let’s start again.

Hello, my name is Txano.

Well, the truth is that my name is George but, other than my granny Ethel, nobody has called me that for a veeeery long time. Not even my parents.

One day, when I was two years old, I put on a red and green woolly cap I called txano, and I liked it so much that there it stayed. I never took it off, even to go to bed, and the whole family started calling me that. When I turned six, I took the cap off, but I didn’t manage to get rid of the name. But I don’t mind. I prefer it to George.

Txano and Oscar

You already know my brother. Yes, that one, the one with the mayo. He’s my twin, and his name is Oscar.

Although we are twins, I was born five minutes before him, and therefore I’m the eldest. And although we look pretty much alike physically, our parents say that we are night and day.

And it’s true that our characters are not at all similar, because, to put it mildly, Oscar is mad as a hatter and does things without thinking about the consequences. On the other hand, he is an absolute geek. When it comes to technology and, when he starts on one of his inventions, he can spend days working nonstop, concentrating fully, and creating incredible stuff.

I, however, am neither as impulsive nor as geeky. I mean that I think about things a little more before doing them, and I don’t have that spark of genius my brother has sometimes.

But, on the other hand, I love to tell stories.

Although our personalities are quite different, it is true that we share a lot of hobbies. Especially, we’re passionate about Lego, videogames, and superhero movies. Ah! And we both love our mother’s pizza and spaghetti Bolognese.

Let’s get on with the story and don’t worry about the rest of the people, which I’ll introduce as we go along.

We had finished school almost a week ago, and we had been enjoying, or rather, suffering our rainy and boring holidays since.

It would have been good to have had a first taste of our freedom with sun and warm weather or, at least, without rain, but it wasn’t to be, and the bad weather stayed with us the whole week.

Playing all the time with the tablet or with our Lego sets was OK for a couple of days, but when you had done nothing else for a whole week, I can assure you it wasn’t that funny any longer. Oscar and I had plenty of alternative plans, but all of them required a blue sky and a dry terrain, and the entertainment choices were starting to get thin on the ground.

Our mother’s name is Barbara, and she works at home translating books, therefore, that week she was the first in line to have to suffer the consequences of our holiday boredom.

After spending the whole morning looking for things to keep ourselves occupied, we had exhausted our repertoire and, bored, we were chasing each other around the house, fighting over any silly little thing.

Txano and Oscar on the couch

During one of those fights, Oscar thought we could have a Burger Combat. Yes, I know that with the name suggested I should have said no, without even asking him for any details, but I must admit that my curiosity won the day, and I wanted to know what crazy new thing he had thought about.

With a dangerous shine in his eyes that I was familiar with from previous disasters, he strode to the kitchen, determined, and without a word, opened the fridge. He produced a bottle of ketchup and one