The Phantom Lollipop Man E-Book

Pamela Butchart

• Herausgeber: Nosy Crow
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Baby Aliens
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 92

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Izzy and her friends are shocked when they find their lollipop man has disappeared! Maisie thinks he's gone to Rome but if that's true, why do they keep seeing a weird white wispy cloud around the school? And why do Izzy's legs feel cold even though she's got tights on? Could it be that the lollipop man is a phantom and he's come to spook them all?! Laugh-out-loud fun from Blue Peter Award winners Pamela Butchart and Thomas Flintham. Read more of Izzy's adventures! Baby Aliens Got My Teacher The Spy Who Loved School Dinners My Headteacher Is a Vampire Rat To Wee Or Not To Wee! There's a Werewolf in my Tent There's a Yeti in the Playground The Phantom Lollipop Man Icarus Was Ridiculous

Leseprobe

Something Seriously Spooky

One time something SERIOUSLY SPOOKY happened at our school and even though Jodi (that’s my best friend) wants to be an actual GHOST FINDER when she’s older, even SHE wasn’t FULLY PREPARED.

It all started when the LOLLIPOP man went MISSING.

Our friend Maisie said that the LOLLIPOP man might have gone on holiday to ROME.

But then when we spoke to the OFFICE LADIES we found out that the LOLLIPOP man definitely HADN’T gone to Rome!

And that’s when everything got really

with the NEBULOUS CLOUD and KARLY-WITH-A-K and the FIRE ALARM and the BLACKOUT!

Our other best friend, Zach, said we probably should have been wearing

from DAY ONE and that if we had, I probably wouldn’t have ended up with HOLEY TIGHTS!

Jodi said that we all had to become GHOST AWARE asap. Especially when we saw the

And most people have never been to an actual GHOST PARTY in their lives.

But we have.

Bad News

When we arrived at school on Monday, Maisie said, “Who’s THAT?” And then she pointed to the LOLLIPOP man.

That’s when I saw that it wasn’t our normal LOLLIPOP man and that it was actually a LOLLIPOP LADY.

So we all went over and Jodi said, “Who are you, please?” And I knew that she said “please” because of one time when we went to the takeaway around the corner from Jodi’s house and there was a new person serving the food and Jodi said, “Who are you?” and the new person said, “None of your business! Who are YOU?” And then Jodi’s mum made us wait outside while she

with the new person and then she didn’t have to pay for the chips that day and she told Jodi that she should always say please when she asks who someone is.

So anyway, the LOLLIPOP lady smiled at us and said, “I’m Mabel. Pleased to meet you.”

And we all just looked at each other because the old LOLLIPOP man NEVER smiled at us and I don’t think he was really pleased about meeting any of us.

So we asked Mabel if she knew what had happened to the old LOLLIPOP man but she said that she didn’t and that she was sorry and we said that was OK because it wasn’t her fault she didn’t know.

Jodi said that maybe the LOLLIPOP man was off sick or something and I thought that she was probably right because the LOLLIPOP man was REALLY old and I was sure that he must’ve been almost one hundred years old. Maisie said that she hoped the LOLLIPOP man was OK because even though most people do not like the LOLLIPOP man because he’s

and he shouts at us and waves his LOLLIPOP stick about if he doesn’t like the way we’re crossing the road, he seems to like Maisie and he even speaks to her a bit and asks us where she is when she’s not with us.

So I said that he had probably just gone away for a long weekend like my gran does when she goes to Blackpool and Maisie smiled and said she thought I was right and that she hoped he had gone to Rome.

But the LOLLIPOP man wasn’t back the next day. Or the day after that. And when we arrived at school on Friday and the LOLLIPOP man STILL wasn’t back Maisie said that she thought something had

in Rome and that she could feel it in her BONES and that maybe the LOLLIPOP man had been

Jodi looked at me and I looked at Jodi because we were both thinking the same thing. And that was that the LOLLIPOP man HADN’T been kidnapped in Rome and that he had probably been SACKED and REPLACED by the new, younger LOLLIPOP lady who actually SMILED at people and seemed not to hate everyone like the old LOLLIPOP man did.

But before we could say anything Zach said, “I’ll ask Miss Jones,” and he got up and wandered over to Miss Jones’s desk.

Maisie STARED at Miss Jones when Zach spoke to her and so did we because Miss Jones had a

on her face and then she went a bit RED like the time she accidentally said a SWEAR when she couldn’t fit the school minibus into any of the parking spaces at Tesco when Gary Petrie needed a wee and people kept tooting their car horns at us.

When Zach got back from Miss Jones’s desk he said that she didn’t know if the LOLLIPOP man was sick or not and that Miss Jones had seemed really

when he asked her and that it seemed like she didn’t actually KNOW who he was talking about.

We all thought it was a bit WEIRD that Miss Jones didn’t know who the LOLLIPOP man was because he’d been here since we were in Year One and maybe even before that.

But Jodi said that Miss Jones probably never needed his help to cross the road because she always gets here really early and parks her car right outside the classroom. Then Jodi said she wasn’t sure grown-ups were even ALLOWED to use the LOLLIPOP man and that LOLLIPOP people were probably only allowed to help people who were under sixteen cross the road and that they probably even asked to see their passports as PROOF OF AGE.

That’s when Maisie said we needed to ask

why the LOLLIPOP man was missing and what hospital they thought he might have been taken to so that we could all go and visit at the weekend and take him some Lucozade and grapes.

So at break we wandered around the playground asking people about the LOLLIPOP man. But nobody knew where he was. Then Jodi said, “That’s it. We’re going to have to ask the OFFICE LADIES. They’ll definitely know.”

Maisie

Even though Jodi was very right to say that the office ladies would know (because the office ladies know EVERYTHING!) it was still a bit of a dangerous thing to do because:

When we got to the school office, Jodi said that she wasn’t going to be the one to go up to the glass window because she had been the one who came up with the idea to ask the office ladies and that it was someone else’s turn.

So I just looked down at the ground and didn’t say anything because I was hoping Zach would say he would go because usually we just make him do it anyway.

But then nobody said anything for ages and when I looked up I saw that Zach was looking down at the ground, too. And also that Maisie was covering her face with her hair.

So that’s when I said, “Fine. I’ll go,” and I took a deep breath and walked over to the glass window and knocked on the wall beneath it because the window is too high up to reach. And my granddad says that that’s what the office ladies DEMANDED when the school was first being built and he knows that for a FACT because he helped build my school ages ago when he came back from The War.

So anyway, the glass window slid open but before I could even say ONE WORD it SLAMMED SHUT again.

I looked over at Jodi and she did her WIDEEYES at me so I took another deep breath and knocked on the wall again.

When the glass door opened, I shouted,

before it could shut again. That’s when one of the office ladies stuck her head out and I saw RIGHT up her nose.

My hands were

but I just wiped them on my skirt and said, “I’m really sorry but I need to ask you a question.” The office lady sighed REALLY loudly and then muttered something to one of the other office ladies inside the office and then THEY sighed, too. The office lady didn’t say anything after the sigh, but she didn’t close the glass door either, so that’s when I said, “Where’s the old LOLLIPOP man gone, please?”

The office lady leaned out of the window further and I could see that she had a long, dark hair under her chin which was a bit weird because she was a lady and also because it was just one long hair and I wasn’t sure how it got there or why she didn’t just pull it out.

Then she said, “Who?!”

So I said, “There’s a new LOLLIPOP man that’s a lady. What happened to the old LOLLIPOP man?”

The office lady slid the glass door shut and started whispering to the other office ladies inside. So I put my ear against the wall to try to hear what they were whispering about but I couldn’t.

Then the other office lady stuck her head RIGHT out of the window and said, “The LOLLIPOP man has moved on.”

And then she slammed the little door shut. And that’s when I heard

Who’s Jack??

Once the nurse EVENTUALLY let us in to see Maisie, I thought Maisie was going to tell us that she’d screamed and fainted into the big pot plant because she’d heard that the LOLLIPOP man had MOVED ON.

But when we sat on the end of the little bed in the nurse’s office, Maisie said that she had gotten the

when the office lady leaned out of the window because she thought the office lady had been trying to “get” me.

I looked at Zach and Zach looked at Jodi because we knew that if Maisie HADN’T heard what the office ladies had said about the LOLLIPOP man MOVING ON, she didn’t realise that they obviously meant that the LOLLIPOP man had PASSED AWAY.

Then Jodi said, “Maisie, why don’t you have a little rest and I’ll make sure Miss Jones knows where you are. We’ll come back and get you at lunchtime, OK?”

Maisie nodded and Jodi gave us a LOOK

and we knew that it meant that we shouldn’t tell Maisie about the LOLLIPOP man just now because she was already in a bit of a state about the scary office lady.

Jodi went off to speak to the school nurse while me and Zach tucked Maisie in and poured her a juice.

When we got outside Jodi said that she’d told the nurse that she should

tell Maisie about the LOLLIPOP man passing away. And that the nurse hadn’t known about the LOLLIPOP man passing away. But when we went back to the nurse’s office at lunchtime, the nurse wasn’t there and neither was Maisie.

So we went to the dinner hall to see if she was there. But she wasn’t. And she wasn’t in the toilets either.