Selby Spacedog

by Duncan Ball

  Paw note: Read my poem, ‘My Spacewalk’, after this story and you’ll see what happened. (Or what didn’t happen!)

  S

  MY SPACEWALK

  I took a little walk in space

  ‘Cos I was in the perfect place:

  Above the moon, just left of Mars

  Beneath the galaxies and stars.

  I thought I’d wander for an hour

  Bathing in a meteor shower.

  Then after that I thought I may

  Surf along the Milky Way.

  If only I could get an inkling

  Why the stars are always twinkling

  I’d be the smartest dog alive.

  (If I managed to survive.)

  I’d be careful (on my stroll)

  Not to step in a black hole.

  The other thing I would avoid

  Was any speeding asteroid.

  I took a little walk in space

  I didn’t run, I didn’t race.

  My feet were moving, treading air,

  But I wasn’t getting anywhere.

  I moved them faster, slippy-slip,

  My tootsies couldn’t get a grip.

  I took a little walk in space

  But finished in my starting place

  Selby

  Acknowledgements

  The author would like to thank Anna McFarlane and Laura Harris for hounding the author into writing this book and for their dogged determination to sniff out Selby’s mistakes.

  Any similarity between Camilla Bonzer, the bomb-throwing librarian in the story ’Books, Bombs and Book Week’, and any of the wonderful librarians who the author has met in his travels around Australia is purely coincidental.

  About the Author

  Duncan Ball is an Australian author and scriptwriter, best known for his popular books for children. Among his most-loved works are the Selby books of stories plus the collections Selby’s Selection, Selby’s Joke Book and Selby’s Side-Splitting Joke Book. Some of these books have also been published in New Zealand, Germany, Japan and the USA, and have won countless awards, most of which were voted by the children themselves.

  Among Duncan’s other books are the Emily Eyefinger series about the adventures of a girl who was born with an eye on the end of her finger, and the comedy novels Piggott Place and Piggotts in Peril, about the frustrations of twelve-year-old Bert Piggott forever struggling to get his family of ratbags and dreamers out of the trouble they are constantly getting themselves into.

  Duncan lives in Sydney with his wife, Jill, and their cat, Jasper. Jasper often keeps Duncan company while he’s writing and has been known to help by walking on the keyboard. Once, returning to his work, Duncan found the following word had mysteriously appeared on screen: lkantawq … … ….

  For more information about Duncan and his books, see Selby’s web site at: www.harpercollins.com.au/selby

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Emily Eyefinger

  Emily Eyefinger, Secret Agent

  Emily Eyefinger and the Lost Treasure

  Emily Eyefinger and the Black Volcano

  Emily Eyefinger’s Alien Adventure

  Emily Eyefinger and the Devil Bones

  Emily Eyefinger and the Balloon Bandits

  Piggott Place

  Piggotts in Peril

  Selby’s Secret

  Selby Speaks

  Selby Screams

  Selby Supersnoop

  Selby Spacedog

  Selby Snowbound

  Selby Surfs

  Selby Snaps!

  Selby’s Joke Book

  Selby Splits

  Selby’s Selection

  Selby’s Stardom

  Selby’s Side-splitting Joke Book

  Selby Sorcerer

  Copyright

  Angus&Robertson

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia

  First published in Australia in 1996

  This edition published in 2011

  by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

  ABN 36 009 913 517

  www.harpercollins.com.au

  Text copyright © Duncan Ball 1996

  Illustrations copyright © Allan Stomann 1996

  The right of Duncan Ball to be identified as the moral rights author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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  2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada

  10 East 53rd Street, New York NY 10022, USA

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Ball, Duncan, 1941—.

  Selby spacedog / Duncan Ball.

  ISBN: 978-0-207-20006-9 (pbk.)

  ISBN: 978-0-7304-9528-4 (ePub)

  1. Dogs — Juvenile fiction. I. Stomann,Allan. II.Title.

  A823.3

  Cover and internal design by Christa Edmonds