The Giants and the Joneses. Julia Donaldson
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The Giants and the Joneses
JULIA DONALDSON
Illustrated by Paul Hess
The Giants and the Joneses
Text copyright © 2004 Julia Donaldson
Illustrations copyright © 2004 Paul Hess
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Egmont UK Ltd
239 Kensington High Street
London
W8 6SA
Visit our web site at www.egmont.co.uk First e-book edition 2010 ISBN 978 1 4052 5158 7
For Angharad and Rhiannon
Table of Contents
12 The staircase and the slide
18 The running-away collection
‘BEESH, BEESH, BEESH!’ said the girl giant. In giant language, this meant, ‘Please, please, please!’
The girl giant, Jumbeelia, was sitting up in bed and holding out a book to her mother. ‘Beesh, beesh, beesh, Mij!’ she pleaded again.
Mij, Jumbeelia’s mother, sighed. Without even looking at the book, she knew that the picture on the front was of a tiny little man standing on a leaf. When would Jumbeelia, who was nearly nine and perfectly capable of reading to herself, grow out of these babyish bedtime stories about the iggly plops?
Everyone knew that the iggly plops didn’t really exist. Just as well, since they were such nasty little things in all the stories about them. Jumbeelia’s big brother had stopped believing in them long before he was this age.
Jumbeelia’s mother took a different book from the shelf. It had a picture of some nice normal giant children running about in school uniform.
But Jumbeelia looked so disappointed that Mij gave in. Yet again she