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One

Until he was four years old, James Henry Trotter had a happy life He lived peacefully with his mother and father in a beautiful house beside the sea There were always plenty of other children for him to play with, and there was the sandy beach for him to run about on, and the ocean to paddle in It was the perfect life for a small boy

Then, one day, Ja, and there a terrible thing happened Both of theht, ry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo

Now this, as you can well ientle parents But in the long run it was far nastier for James than it was for them Their troubles were all over in a jiffy They were dead and gone in thirty-five seconds flat Poor James, on the other hand, was still very htened in a vast unfriendly world The lovely house by the seaside had to be sold i but a s a pair of pyjamas and a toothbrush, was sent away to live with his two aunts

Their nae and Aunt Spiker, and I am sorry to say that they were both really horrible people They were selfish and lazy and cruel, and right fro poor James for almost no reason at all They never called hiusting little beast' or 'you filthy nuisance' or 'you ave him any toys to play with or any picture books to look at His room was as bare as a prison cell

They lived - Aunt Sponge, Aunt Spiker, and now Jah hill in the south of England The hill was so high that froarden James could look down and see for miles and miles across a marvellous landscape of woods and fields; and on a very clear day, if he looked in the right direction, he could see a tiny grey dot far away on the horizon, which was the house that he used to live in with his beloved mother and father And just beyond that, he could see the ocean itself - a long thin streak of blackish-blue, like a line of ink, beneath the rim of the sky

But Jao down off the top of that hill Neither Aunt Sponge nor Aunt Spiker could ever be bothered to take him out herself, not even for a so alone 'The nasty little beast will only get into arden,' Aunt Spiker had said And terrible punish locked up in the cellar with the rats for a week, if he even so much as dared to climb over the fence

The garden, which covered the whole of the top of the hill, was large and desolate, and the only tree in the entire place (apart from a clump of dirty old laurel bushes at the far end) was an ancient peach tree that never gave any peaches There was no swing, no seesaw, no sand pit, and no other children were ever invited to come up the hill to play with poor Ja or a cat around to keep him company And as time went on, he became sadder and sadder, and more andat the botto wistfully at the lovely but forbidden world of woods and fields and ocean that was spread out below hiic carpet

Two

After Ja with his aunts for three whole years there ca rather peculiar happened to hi, which as I say was only rather peculiar, soon caused a second thing to happen which was very peculiar And then the very peculiar thing, in its own turn, caused a really fantastically peculiar thing to occur

It all started on a blazing hot day in the e, Aunt Spiker and Jaarden Ja wood for the kitchen stove Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker were sitting colasses of fizzy le him to see that he didn't stop work for one moment

Aunt Sponge was enory eyes, a sunken mouth,

and one of those white flabby faces that looked exactly as though it had been boiled She was like a great white soggy overboiled cabbage Aunt Spiker, on the other hand, was lean and tall and bony, and she wore steel-rimmed spectacles that fixed on to the end of her nose with a clip She had a screeching voice and long wet narrow lips, and whenever she got angry or excited, little flecks of spit would co out of her s, sipping their drinks, and every now and again screa at James to chop faster and faster They also talked about theht she was Aunt

Sponge had a long-handledat her own hideous face

'I look and se declared, 'as lovely as a rose!

Just feast your eyes upon my face, observe my shapely nose!

Behold my heavenly silky locks!

And if I take off both my socks

You'll see my dainty toes'

'But don't forget,' Aunt Spiker cried, 'how much your tummy shows!'

Aunt Sponge went red Aunt Spiker said, 'My sweet, you cannot win,