Buckle and Squash and the Monstrous Moat-Dragon

By Sarah Courtauld

WINNER OF THE 2014 SAINSBURY'S CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD

Here begins a tale of two sisters - Eliza, who dreams of becoming a swashbuckling hero, and Lavender, whose greatest wish is to be a pampered princess.
When Lavender gets kidnapped in the Forest of Toothy, Vicious and Flatulent Dragons, the sisters must face a host of deadly enemies. Hairy-faced villains. Ominous turnips. A witch called Boris. And a moat-dragon who is just a little bit peckish for a tasty child-sized snack.
Will Eliza and Lavender ever escape?
Why is their goat, Gertrude, so depressed?
Whose side is Bonnet, the smallest giant in the world really on?
And what day is it today?
This book will answer some, but not all, of these questions . . .

Buckle and Squash and the Monstrous Moat-Dragon by Sarah Courtauld is a brilliantly funny debut for fans of How to Train Your Dragon and Mr Gum.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Jul 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781447255581

Sarah Courtauld

Sarah Courtauld is a fresh and funny new voice in children's fiction. She won the Funny Women Comedy Writing Award in 2012 and the BAFTA/Rocliffe New Writing Forum 2012, judged by a panel including Jennifer Saunders and Chris Addison. She also does stand-up and improv, as well as working part-time as a writer for Usborne Children's Books. She is the author of Buckle and Squash and the Monstrous Moat-Dragon which won the Sainsbury's Children's Book Award in 2014.

Book preview

For Eliza and Beatrice

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Three Again

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

About the Author

Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse

Roddy Doyle

My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish

Once upon a time, when the world was full of princes and princesses, knights and damsels, dragons and lady dragons, it was also full of mud.

Squelchy, squishy, gurgling, sticky, stinky, endless, mud-coloured mud.

To the two young girls cleaning out their goat pen, it seemed as if there was an infinite supply of mud in the field behind their old tumbledown farm, which was called Old Tumbledown Farm, in their village in the middle of nowhere, which was called The Middle of Nowhere, in a forgotten corner of the kingdom, which was called The Forgotten Corner of the Kingdom, deep in the realm of Squerb.

I said that they were both cleaning out the goat pen, but that wasn’t totally true. Eliza was inside the goat pen, shovelling the mud, while her older sister Lavender was outside the goat pen ‘supervising’ her (if by ‘supervising’ you mean ‘reading an enormous book of fairy tales, while wearing a pointy princess hat’). Occasionally, Lavender put the book down and burst into song:

‘Ooh, Prince Charming

How handsome you are!

With a steed so shiny

And your hair so shiny

And your teeth so shiny

And your nose so shiny

Oooooh, Prince Charming . . . you are a prince.’

Inside the goat pen, Eliza gritted her teeth.

She was used to the way her sister’s songs rhymed ‘prince’ with ‘prince’, ‘shiny’ with ‘shiny’, and ‘princess’ with ‘bucketful of hens’. But that didn’t mean she liked it. As Lavender started on the second verse, Eliza stopped shovelling mud and stuck her spade into the ground.

‘You know, ever since you got that book of fairy tales,’ she said, ‘you’ve been unbelievably—’

‘Princess-like?’ said Lavender. ‘I know! When I learn French, I’m going to sing all my songs en français, and then they’ll sound even better.’

Eliza exchanged a look of despair with Gertrude, their goat, who was sitting at the other end of the pen, quietly chewing.

Admittedly, Eliza didn’t really know what Gertrude was thinking. But she was pretty sure they understood one another.¹

Then, for one beautiful moment, Lavender’s singing stopped.

You could almost hear the grass growing, the sun shining, and the moles playing Snap underground.

It didn’t last.

‘A knight!’ Lavender cried, looking out across the field. ‘A knight upon the high road! I may faint!’

Eliza looked up, and saw a small, bald man ambling down the path towards them from the direction of their local village, The Middle of Nowhere.

‘That’s not a knight,’ said Eliza. ‘That’s Bob.’

‘It is a knight, riding upon a steed!’

‘No, it’s Bob. Carrying some post.’

‘It is a knight,’ Lavender hissed. ‘I’m going to faint!’

As Bob ambled along the path past Old Tumbledown Farm, he whistled at Eliza and chucked her a scroll. And, true to her word, Lavender sighed and fell to the ground at the sight of him, as if she had just been tapped on the head by a large, invisible spoon.

‘Well?’ Lavender whispered to Eliza, as she lay sprawled on the grass with her eyes firmly shut. ‘How would you rate my faint? Out of ten?’

‘I thought you had fainted,’ said Eliza.

‘I have!’ Lavender hissed back. ‘I’d just like some feedback, that’s all. How was the faint, overall? Out of ten? Maybe a seven? Do you think that yonder knight is in love with me?’

Eliza looked at her sister, and then looked at Bob, who was walking away down the path, scratching his bum.

And she knew the scroll she was holding in her hands was only going to make things worse.

‘He’s probably in love with me,’ said Lavender. ‘I must compose him a poem, telling him how sad I am to reject his love, for I am destined to marry a prince.’

Eliza really didn’t want to give her sister the scroll in her hands. She knew it was only going to encourage her. Perhaps if she just quietly gave it to Gertrude, Gertrude would gobble it up, and Lavender would never—

‘What’s that? Is it for me?’ said Lavender, springing to her feet and plucking the scroll from Eliza’s hands. She broke the seal, and the scroll sprang open.

‘Oooh – Prince Rudolph!’

As Eliza had predicted, it was a portrait of a prince. Lavender already had seven in her collection.

‘Lavender,’ said Eliza. ‘Do you think you could just help me clean out the goat pen? Because after we do that, we need to feed the chickens. And then the pigs. And then we have to cut the grass . . .’

But Lavender had already skipped into the house to stick the prince’s portrait to her bedroom wall. She spent the rest of the afternoon there gazing at it and daydreaming about her destiny, which was almost certainly going to feature a handsome prince.

And Eliza spent the rest of the day working in the fields, daydreaming about her destiny. She wasn’t going to fall in love with some boring prince. She was going to battle dragons and giants. She was going to vanquish monsters and travel to distant mountains.

And she was going to solve mysteries like:

Who ate all the food in the pig pen?

And:

Is the incredibly haunted forest really incredibly haunted? Or is it just moderately haunted?

And:

What really happened to Grandpa Joe?

Ever since that terrible day of calamity, the day which no one ever talked about, the day when Eliza and Lavender’s parents had dressed up as trees for the village festival and been accidentally eaten by a bear, Eliza and Lavender had been

Reviews for Buckle and Squash and the Monstrous Moat-Dragon

[robinrowlesauthor · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My Title: A belly full of laughs and endless entertainment for everyone!

Author Sarah Courtauld has put together a very entertaining read that kids will really love. This is a tale about two very different sisters. Eliza who likes nothing more than battles against villains and dragons, and Lavender who just wants to be a pampered princess.

This book contains loads of quirky illustrations which beautifully adds to the zany storyline. (My personal favourite illustrations being Grandpa Joe, the villain Mordmont, the tearful rhinoceros, and the monstrous green moat-dragons!)
Expect your child to be very easily engaged with this book because of its vast amount of fun, humour, wit, jokes, fabulous adventures and its delightful characters.

Despite Granny's warning about the Black Death ringing in the protagonists (the girls) ears, they head out into the haunted forest and come face to face with an evil count – when Lavender gets kidnapped in the forest of Toothy you can expect an unpredictable and bumpy ride!

What will happen? - Both girls have a chance to fulfil their dreams...
It really is an entertaining read. This is a book that children will want to read over and over again!
Parents will enjoy sharing this story with their children at bedtime. It's ideal for early readers too!
I recommend this book.

I received a free paperback copy of this book in a first-reads giveaway.