id="ud2fdf771-ed7c-5c19-bc48-536cddffa940">
JEAN URE
Illustrated by Karen Donnelly
HarperCollins Children’s Books An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London, SE1 9GF
Shrinking Violet first published in Great Britain by Collins in 2002 Passion Flower first published in Great Britain by Collins in 2003 Pumpkin Pie first published in Great Britain by Collins in 2002
First published in this three-in-one edition by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2006
Text © Jean Ure 2002, 2003, 2002
Illustrations © Karen Donnelly 2002, 2003, 2002
The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780007201556
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007402755 Version: 2016-12-06
Contents
For my niece, Anna Ure, and for Susanna Buxton, who both helped.
Contents
I am a twin. Unfortunately! It is not always easy, being a twin. People expect you to:
look alike
think alike dress alike talk alike.
They also expect you to:
sit together
walk together play together and LOVE EACH OTHER TO BITS.
Some twins, I suppose, might do all these things. We don’t! We try our hardest not to.
My twin is called Lily. I am called Violet.
Spot the difference! We are not identical. If anyone thinks we are, it is because they have not looked properly. “Oh! (they go) They are like two peas in a pod! How ever do you tell them apart?”
LOOK AT THE PICTURES. That is what I say.
Lily says you would have to be blind to mistake her for me. But just to make sure, we always try to wear different clothes. When we can! Like, for instance, Lily will wear black jeans and I will wear red ones. She will wear an orange top and I will wear a white one. We can’t do this at school because of the uniform, but most people at school have learnt to tell us apart. They know that Lily is the LOUD one and I am the quiet one. It’s only, sometimes, new teachers that get us in a muddle. But not for long. If one of us is shrieking, they know at once that it is Lily!
Dad calls her Lily Loudmouth because of all the noise she makes. He claps his hands to his ears and goes, “Here comes Lily Loudmouth!” She loves to dance, and sing along to her favourite music. I do, too, but I only do it when I am at home. Lily does it all over. At home, at school, in the street, in the shopping mall… everywhere! I would be too embarrassed.
Dad teases me and says I am a shrinking violet. Mum says I live too much in Lily’s shadow. Lily just says I am a twonk.
Twinkle twonkle, little Vi, How I really wonder why Lily’s brash and you are shy!
This is a rhyme that I made up, but it is in my Secret Filofax that I keep locked with a key. The key hangs round my neck on a special silver chain. I wouldn’t want anyone reading the things that I keep in my Filofax! Also, I hate it if people call me Vi. I only did it for the rhyme. Violet is bad enough, but Vi is the pits.
The reason we’ve got these weird names is that Mum is a huge gardening person and her two most favourite flowers just happen to be the dear little shrinking violet and a great big blustering lily thing that is covered in spots and grows about eight feet tall.
How she got to be Lily and I got to be Violet was just a mistake. I was supposed to be Lily! I was born first (by five whole minutes) and L comes before V in the alphabet so Lily was going to be me. But what with us being twins, and all babies looking the same anyway, Mum went and got us mixed up. Our nan – Big Nan – had knitted this cute little violet suit for one of us and a sweet little white one for the other, and Mum dressed us in the wrong ones! The only way that she could tell which of us was which