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For more information about the author and her work, visit her website at: dianawynnejones.com
First published by Methuen Children’s Books Ltd 1984
Published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2000 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1984
Illustrations by Paul Hess 2000
Diana Wynne Jones and Paul Hess assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.
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Source ISBN: 9780006755272
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780008116705
Version: 2014-09-29
To Fiona
CONTENTS
This book will prove the following ten facts:
1 A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there.
2 Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch.
3 All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
4 When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, the result is a family fight.
5 Music does not always soothe the troubled breast.
6 An Englishman’s home is his castle.
7 The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
8 One black eye deserves another.
9 Space is the final frontier, and so is the sewage farm.
10 It pays to increase your word power.
The trouble started the day Howard came home from school to find the Goon sitting in the kitchen. It was Fifi who called him the Goon. Fifi was a student who lived in their house and got them tea when their parents were out. When Howard pushed Awful into the kitchen and slammed the door after them both, the first person he saw was Fifi, sitting on the edge of a chair, fidgeting nervously with her striped scarf and her striped leg warmers.
“Thank goodness you’ve come at last!” Fifi said. “We seem to have somebody’s Goon. Look.”
Howard looked the way Fifi’s chin jerked and saw the Goon sitting in a chair by the dresser. He was filling most of the rest of the kitchen with long legs and huge boots. It was a knack the Goon had. The Goon’s head was very small, and his feet were enormous. Howard’s eyes travelled up a yard or so of tight faded jeans, jerked to a stop for a second at the knife with which the Goon was cleaning the dirty nails of his vast hands, and then travelled on over an old leather jacket to the little, round fair head in the distance. The little face looked half-daft.
Howard was in a bad mood anyway. That was Awful’s fault. Awful had made him meet her coming out of school because, as she said, he was her big brother and supposed to look after her. When Howard got there, there was Awful racing out of the gates, chased by twenty angry little girls.