by Matt Haig
CELEBRATE STORIES. LOVE READING.
This book has been specially created and published to celebrate World Book Day. World Book Day is a charity funded by publishers and booksellers in the UK and Ireland. Our mission is to offer every child and young person the opportunity to read and love books by giving you the chance to have a book of your own. To find out more, and for loads of fun activities and reading recommendations to help you to keep reading, visit worldbookday.com
World Book Day in the UK and Ireland is also made possible by generous sponsorship from National Book Tokens and support from authors and illustrators.
World Book Day works in partnership with a number of charities, who are all working to encourage a love of reading for pleasure.
The National Literacy Trust is an independent charity that encourages children and young people to enjoy reading. Just 10 minutes of reading every day can make a big difference to how well you do at school and to how successful you could be in life. literacytrust.org.uk
The Reading Agency inspires people of all ages and backgrounds to read for pleasure and empowerment. They run the Summer Reading Challenge in partnership with libraries; they also support reading groups in schools and libraries all year round. Find out more and join your local library. summerreadingchallenge.org.uk
BookTrust is the UK’s largest children’s reading charity. Each year they reach 3.4 million children across the UK with books, resources and support to help develop a love of reading. booktrust.org.uk
World Book Day also facilitates fundraising for:
Book Aid International, an international book donation and library development charity. Every year, they provide one million books to libraries and schools in communities where children would otherwise have little or no opportunity to read. bookaid.org
Read for Good, who motivate children in schools to read for fun through its sponsored read, which thousands of schools run on World Book Day and throughout the year. The money raised provides new books and resident storytellers in all the children’s hospitals in the UK. readforgood.org
First published in Great Britain in 2020
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
canongate.co.uk
This digital edition first published in 2020 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Matt Haig, 2020
Illustrations copyright © Emily Gravett, 2020
Extract from Evie and the Animals
Copyright © Matt Haig, 2019
Illustrations copyright © Emily Gravett, 2019
The right of Matt Haig and Emily Gravett to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 83885 075 3
eISBN 978 1 83885 077 7
Typeset in Bembo by
Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
Contents
Evie the Superstar
A Big and Dangerous Place
Riding the River
The Pink Dolphins of Peru
The Incredibly Daring Rescue
A Sloth Called Ah
A Very Grumpy Parrot
The Tingle in Evie’s Head That Was the Start of a Brilliant Idea
Four Mosquitoes and a Poison Dart Frog
An Interview with a Jaguar
Evie Saves the Jungle
Character fact files
The Snake and the Frog
Evie Navarro opened the front door and saw a crowd of photographers and journalists.
‘EVIE! EVIE! CAN WE ASK A FEW QUESTIONS?’
‘EVIE! WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE FAMOUS?’
‘EVIE! HERE’S A DOG! CAN YOU READ ITS THOUGHTS?’
Evie stood there feeling dizzy and lightheaded. ‘Um, um . . . I’m sorry – I’ve got to go.’
Evie was a superstar.
That’s what her best friend Ramesh said.
‘You are a superstar,’ he had told her the previous Tuesday, while eating a hummus and falafel sandwich on their favourite bench at Lofting High.
But she wasn’t really. Well, Evie didn’t think so. She wasn’t a celeb or anything.
It was just that a lot of people had heard of her.
She had been in newspapers, and on TV. She had been on the cover of the world-famous Nature magazine, and she had over 200,000 followers on Instagram, even though she had only ever posted two photos (one of a sunset and one of an endangered leatherback sea turtle). And every morning the crowd of journalists at her door grew bigger.
The reason for all this fame and unwanted attention was because Evie had a special talent.
The talent now had an official name, given by scientists.
Inter-species two-way telepathic animal communication.
Or, to put it another way, she could talk to animals. With her mind.
She heard what animals were thinking and could chat to them without even moving her lips.
And though she had kept this skill secret for a very long time, now everybody knew about it.
She had solved a crime with it. And there was lots of proof. On TV. On YouTube. In magazines. Communicating with dolphins at her local zoo. Getting mice to march in a line. Asking rabbits for directions to their burrow. Telling a bearded dragon to change the TV channel, and conducting an interview with a seagull.
There were thousands of strangers on the internet calling her a freak, so Evie had been locking herself away in her bedroom and reading. The book she had been reading most was called Animals of the Amazon, by Professor Abigail García. It was amazing. Full of astonishing facts, and written by a biologist who actually worked in the Amazon, in Peru, finding new species and helping to save the rainforest. Abigail García was on the front cover, smiling and waving in front of the trees, with a parrot on her shoulder.
Evie was holding that exact book in her hands as she stared out at all the shouting reporters.
‘EVIE! EVIE! GIVE US A SMILE!’
‘I’m sorry. I’m just tired—’
‘EVIE! WHAT DO YOU SAY TO PEOPLE WHO SAY YOU ARE A FAKE?’
‘I’d say ask the scientists who have confirmed I am not—’
‘EVIE! DO YOU THINK FAME IS GOING TO YOUR HEAD?’
‘I’d rather not be famous, to be honest—’
‘EVIE! EVIE! EVIE!’
Evie’s dog Scruff came to her side.
‘GET A LIFE!’ he barked at the reporters. ‘LEAVE EVIE ALONE!’
But the reporters didn’t speak dog, and so they carried on doing what they were doing.
Then Evie’s dad came and slammed the front door in the reporters’ faces.
‘Evie, I told you not to answer the door . . .’
‘I forgot.’
‘She forgot,’ said Scruff, in her defence. ‘She is quite forgetful. I mean, I haven’t had a tummy rub all morning.’
‘Scruff, I’ve just woken up. You had forty-eight tummy rubs yesterday. At least.’
‘You say that like there can be such a thing as too many tummy rubs,’ said Scruff. ‘And, well, there can’t.’
A little later, over breakfast, Evie’s dad had an idea about how to deal with all this unwanted attention.
‘It’s the school holidays next week. We need to get away for a while,’ he said, pulling the blinds down to stop the reporters from looking in. ‘What do you think?’
Evie nodded. ‘One hundred per cent agree.’
‘Where would you like to go?’
Evie looked down at the book she was holding. ‘How about the Amazon? I’d like to go bac
k. I know we were there when I was little, when you and Mum worked there, but I can’t remember it except in dreams. Maybe we could make those dreams real?’
Her dad looked worried for a moment. Then he smiled. ‘You are your mother’s child. But the Amazon is a big and dangerous place. Are you sure? And what about Scruff?’
Scruff was lying in his basket.
‘Would you like to go and stay with Granny Flora?’ Evie asked the dog.
‘Yes,’ Scruff said. ‘Yes, I would. I get to sleep in her bed and she gives me human food. Including pizza. I like pizza. I know I shouldn’t but I do. Pizza is good. Can I go right now?’
‘Scruff would be fine at Granny Flora’s,’ Evie told her dad.
‘Okay. But it’s the Amazon.’
Evie sighed. She knew all about the Amazon. Not just from her dreams but also from books. She knew that one out of ten animals that exist on Earth can be found in the rainforest. And that many of them are dangerous – poison dart frogs, wandering spiders and sleek, prowling spotted jaguars.
But she also knew that more dangerous than all of those creatures were human beings. She knew the rainforest was under attack. Humans destroy enough rainforest to fill thirty football pitches every minute.
‘I’m sure. I want to go there and think about doing something useful. I want to help fight climate change. I want to protect animals. This might help me do that.’
‘Do you want to visit the Brazilian rainforest?’
Evie shook her head. Her mum had died in the Brazilian rainforest.
‘No. Not yet. I’ve been thinking about Peru,’ said Evie.
‘Wow. You really have thought about this. But I am worried.’
‘There’s a surprise.’
‘I’m sorry, Evie, but it’s not the safest place for a holiday. Are you sure you don’t want to go to Mallorca? Or the South of France? Or . . . Cornwall? Cornwall’s nice.’
‘A riverboat cruise would be safe,’ she suggested. ‘And I could meet some pink river dolphins. I’ve done my research. There’s one called Ernesto’s River Adventures. It’s a small boat. Just a few passengers.’
‘Well, okay. I’ll look into it. But maybe we should sneak away to Granny Flora’s until we go. Just to get away from all this noise.’
‘Thanks, Dad!’ said Evie.
‘Thanks!’ said Scruff, closing his eyes and thinking of all that pizza.
Evie’s dad smiled. ‘But I can’t promise pink river dolphins!’
The riverboat cruise had been a great idea.
Evie and her dad were having an amazing time in Peru, sailing down the river.
She had exchanged thoughts with a (gentle) manatee and a (grumpy) giant otter and had had a shocking conversation with an electric eel, whose thoughts zapped and jolted about so fast Evie got a headache. They had:
• visited a nature reserve known as the ‘Jungle of Mirrors’ where the backwaters were so still that they could see their reflections;
• spotted a three-toed sloth in the trees and Evie had mind-chatted sleepily with her;
• met more species of monkeys and birds than even Evie had known existed;
• and finally caught a glimpse of a deadly-looking jaguar between the trees.
The glimpse of the jaguar had been far too short for Evie’s liking, and she hadn’t been able to pick up on its thoughts.
‘I’d love to be face to face with a jaguar,’ Evie said.
Her dad went pale. ‘Maybe we could get a cat when we get home,’ he said. ‘A nice small cat. I mean, cats are cats. I’m sure Scruff wouldn’t mind.’
‘He would mind. He thinks cats are evil. He thinks cats are in a plot to take over the world and then make dogs their slaves. And anyway, I would love to talk with a jaguar.’
‘Jaguars are killers,’ her dad said.
‘But, Dad, so are humans. I mean, technically. And you’re a human and I still talk to you.’
‘Yes. But unlike a jaguar, I’m not going to bite your head off. Even if I got really angry.’
Evie sighed. ‘Dad, that’s prejudiced. Jaguars rarely kill humans.’
Her dad decided to change the subject. ‘Shall we look for some pink river dolphins?’
‘Sure,’ said Evie. ‘It’s a shame we haven’t seen any yet.’
‘There is still time!’ said Gerry, a friendly, twinkly-eyed American man with wild grey hair, who was one of the few other passengers on board the boat.
‘Oh yes,’ said his red-cheeked wife, Barbara, looking through her binoculars across the river. ‘We should hopefully see them as we get closer to Iquitos City.’
Iquitos City. Their final destination.
It is the largest city in the world that you can’t get to by road. You either have to fly there, or get a boat.
The riverboat was captained by a hairy man called Ernesto who drank and passed around a lot of bottles of Inca Kola, a local soft drink – a sweet, slightly sickly liquid that Evie thought tasted like melted ice cream. She liked it and she also liked the food. They had stopped at a hut beside the river that sold something called tacu tacu, a kind of fried dumpling that was sticky and totally yummy.
As Evie bit into the tacu tacu, and wondered why they weren’t sold all over the world, they set sail again. She leant over the side of the boat, looking for amazing river creatures to chat with, in the hope of seeing a pink river dolphin.
The jungle was incredible. The vast, wide brown-green river. The rubber trees lining its banks. The parrots flying overhead. The buzz of insects and the distant squawks and squeals of unseen animals far away in the trees. It felt like life itself.
There were some sad sights along the way, though, as they got a bit closer to Iquitos City. Evie saw stretches of empty dead land where the forest had been destroyed. She saw smoke rising above the jungle where developers had set fire to the trees in order to clear the land.
‘Isn’t it terrible,’ sighed Barbara, ‘what people are doing to this place?’
And then it happened.
Right there, in that moment of sadness.
Gerry pointed to the river. ‘Look! In the water! Just below the surface!’
And Evie saw it. A rising pinkness.
Could it be? Could it possibly be?
Yes.
‘A dolphin!’
Evie quickly realised there wasn’t just one dolphin.
There was another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And . . .
SIX!
SIX DOLPHINS!
They burst out of the water, one after the other.
As pink as Evie had hoped they would be.
Evie remembered reading in Animals of the Amazon that when the dolphins were young they were a normal dolphin grey, but by the time they reached adulthood they would grow pink. And the male dolphins tended to be pinker than the females.
‘Told you we’d see some!’ said Barbara.
‘This is incredible!’ Evie’s dad shouted, as all six jumped out of the water together.
‘It is very rare to see so many all at once,’ said Ernesto. ‘One or two, maybe, but six! It hardly ever happens! This is lucky! A lucky sign!’
Evie concentrated hard to pick up on what the dolphins were thinking and saying to each other.
‘This is fun!’ one said.
‘Let’s race the boat!’ said another.
‘I just ate a turtle,’ said a third.
‘I hate turtles! They get stuck in my teeth. Even worse than crabs.’
‘No. Turtles are yum. Crunchy yumminess. And good for your teeth.’
‘WHOOSH!’ said another one, jumping through the air.
Evie tried to send a thought to them.
The thought wasn’t a particularly deep or clever thought. It was:
‘Hello! I am the human girl on the boat. Can you see me?’
The dolphins seemed confused by this.
‘Did you hear something?’ one aske
d.
‘Um, I think I might have . . .’
And then the dolphins went quiet and disappeared out of sight, only to reappear moments later as they popped up beside the boat.
‘Hello, human girl!’
‘Yes, hello, human girl! What is that you are eating?’
‘It’s, um, a tacu tacu. It’s human food. I don’t think dolphins would like it.’
‘Try us,’ whistled one of the dolphins. The pinkest and largest with a few scratches on his face. They were quite a fighty species, Evie remembered reading.
So Evie shared out the delicious fried rice and bean dumpling with all six of the dolphins before her dad saw what she was doing.
‘Evie! You can’t do that!’
‘Oops, better go!’ said the large dolphin.
The dolphins disappeared. And Evie watched their pink bodies fade away into the river.
An hour later, they saw more jungle being destroyed.
They sailed past smoke and fire, and Evie heard the howling thoughts of howler monkeys as they scrambled across the canopies.
But then she heard a closer thought. Coming from the water’s edge.
A slow, heavy thought.
‘Help . . .
me . . .’
Evie saw a creature hanging from the low branch of a tree that was dangling over the water’s edge. A strangely-shaped furry creature with a small head and long floppy limbs.
‘Over there!’ Evie pointed and shouted so Ernesto could hear. ‘Over there! Look! A sloth. It needs our help.’
‘She’s right,’ said Gerry, staring through his binoculars.
‘There is no way we can reach it,’ Ernesto said. ‘Look! The fire is getting closer to the edge. And all the smoke. It is far too dangerous.’
Evie didn’t like this. ‘But we have to! It’s in danger.’
‘Yes,’ said her dad, scratching his beard with his usual worried expression, ‘and so would we be if we went over there. We have to keep moving down the river. The smoke is spreading. Evie, please.’
‘Sloths can swim,’ said Ernesto. ‘They are actually great swimmers. It will be fine.’