Violet Mackerel's Remarkable Recovery

by Anna Branford

  Violet drifts in and out of sleep and has strange dreams of butterflies with rhinoceros horns and rhinoceroses with butterfly wings, and rhinocerflies and butternoceroses with necklaces that say “g-e-t-w-e-l-l-s-o-o-n.” Mama and Nicola and Dylan and Vincent come in and say “hello” and “how are you feeling?,” but Violet is too sleepy and groggy to say too much back.

  The next morning, though, she feels a bit better. Mama has to go out to a special knitting workshop, so Vincent comes round to look after Violet and they eat minty ice cream with pink bits and watch the movie about the children and the nanny with the song “My Favorite Things.”

  Then Violet feels floppy again, so Vincent refills her hot water bottle and they listen to some opera music on the radio.

  “My throat feels funny and I still feel a bit groggy,” says Violet. “Do you think that means my recovery isn’t going to be very remarkable?”

  “No,” says Vincent. “I think even very remarkable recoveries probably take a few days.”

  “I think so too,” says Violet, who is drifting off again.

  When she wakes up, Vincent has gone home and Mama is back from the knitting workshop. She tries to refill Violet’s water bottle, but Vincent has twisted the top on so tightly that she can’t get it off. After a little while her face is all red from trying.

  “It’s no good,” she says. “My arm isn’t strong enough.”

  And then, suddenly, Violet remembers the old lady Iris MacDonald.

  “How are we going to find Iris MacDonald?” asks Violet.

  “Who?” says Mama.

  “The old lady Iris MacDonald promised we would have tea when we were better, so she could hear my opera voice and I could see her superarm. But she doesn’t have our phone number and we don’t have hers, so how will we be able to have tea with her?”

  Mama thinks.

  “She knows my name is Violet Mackerel,” says Violet, “and there aren’t many other Mackerels in the phone book, so maybe she will look us up.”

  “She might,” says Mama.

  “But what if she doesn’t quite remember my name?” asks Violet. “What if she remembers Violet, but not quite Mackerel?”

  “Well . . .,” begins Mama.

  “Let’s phone the hospital and ask them and tell them it is an emergency,” says Violet.

  “I don’t think this is really the sort of emergency that hospitals help with,” says Mama.

  Mama thinks a bit more.

  “Violet, it might be that Iris MacDonald was just a friend for the time you were in the hospital waiting room and not really the sort of friend for having tea with afterward.”

  This suggestion of Mama’s makes Violet feel quite cross. Her throat is too sore from her tonsillectomy to have a cross voice, so instead she frowns until her eyebrows almost get in her eyes.

  “Iris MacDonald is not that kind of friend,” she says to Mama.

  Violet frowns more. Frowning is not as good as a cross voice, which people have to hear whether they want to or not. People have to be looking right at you to see how hard you are frowning, and Mama is not looking.

  “Please can I have a notebook?” Violet asks Mama when her eyebrows are too tired to frown anymore.

  Mama brings a bowl of frosty forest-berry ice cream, a notebook, and a pencil on a tray to Violet’s bed, and Violet starts a new page that is called Thinking Outside the Box About Finding Iris MacDonald.

  “Thinking outside the box” is when you find extraordinary solutions to problems and puzzles, because extraordinary solutions are often better than the ordinary sort. It is one of Violet’s favorite problem-solving strategies.

  In parentheses, after “Thinking Outside the Box About Finding Iris MacDonald,” Violet writes “The Totbafim Plot.” The word “Totbafim” is made from the first letters of all the words in her plot.

  Next on the page she draws a big box, and inside the box she writes her ordinary ideas, such as:

  and

  Then outside the box she writes her extraordinary ideas, such as:

  and

  They are all good ideas, Violet thinks, especially the ones outside the box.

  But it is very difficult to make any of them happen from your bed, where you are still recovering from a tonsillectomy.

  That is the problem.

  That night before bed, while she is eating ginger and passion fruit ice cream, Violet feels a bit sad.

  She asks Dylan if he will help her to find the old lady Iris MacDonald, and he says he will put a little notice about her in his violin case. Dylan plays his violin at the market on Saturday mornings, and people throw coins in his case. He thinks they might read a little notice if there was one there.

  Violet is not sure.

  Violet also asks Nicola if she will help her to find the old lady Iris MacDonald, and Nicola says she will put up a sign on the notice board at school.

  “I don’t think Iris MacDonald will see it there,” says Violet.

  Violet says thank you to her brother and sister for trying, but before she goes to sleep she decides that she will ring up Vincent and see if he has any ideas. Violet knows Vincent’s phone number and she can dial it by herself.

  “The Totbafim Plot didn’t work,” Violet tells him.

  “The Totbafim Plot,” says Vincent thoughtfully. “What’s that?”

  “It was the plan to help me find the old lady Iris MacDonald who I met in the hospital waiting room.”

  “If it had worked and you had found her, what would you have said?” asks Vincent.

  Violet thinks.

  “ ‘I hope your arm is feeling better and I am glad we got to be friends in the waiting room,’ ” she says.

  Violet is surprised that it isn’t a message about the opera voice and the superarm, or even the afternoon tea. Sometimes you don’t even know what you think until someone asks you a question like that.

  “When you are a backpacker like me,” says Vincent, “you meet lots and lots of special people just once, and never get to see them again. So what I do, sometimes, is send messages to the stars for them.”

  “Do they get your messages?” asks Violet.

  “I don’t know,” says Vincent. “But maybe they feel something special when they look at the stars that night.”

  It is a good idea, Violet thinks.

  She says good night to Vincent and she looks out at the stars through her bedroom window. She rests her hands on the windowsill and circles her thumbs in the way of the old lady Iris MacDonald.

  “This is a message for Iris MacDonald,” says Violet to the stars as her thumbs go round and round.

  Thank you for being my friend in the waiting room and I hope your arm is getting better. Even very remarkable recoveries can take a few days, so don’t worry if your arm is not super yet. Lots of love from Violet Mackerel. (There are not many Mackerels in the phone book, so if you want to look me up, you still can.)

  That night in bed, before she goes to sleep, Violet composes a verse of “My Favorite Things” especially in honor of the old lady Iris MacDonald.

  After that, she feels a bit better.

  In the morning, while she has her purple, yogurt, grape-and-blueberry breakfast ice cream, Violet listens to the radio. Most of all she would like to hear some opera music. She likes thinking of the radio host saying, “And that was Violet Mackerel, who never sang like that before her tonsillectomy.” But this morning there is no opera music on any of the radio stations.

  So Violet decides that she will listen to the Gardening Channel, since somebody has rung in to ask a question about violets.

  “The leaves on my violets have dead spots. I’ve tried everything, but it just keeps on happening,” says the caller.

  “Hmm,” says the host of the Gardening Channel. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about growing violets, but if any of our listeners have any ideas, we’d love to hear from you.”

  Violet wishes she knew the answer to the problem. She would quite like to ring up an
d talk on the radio. She listens to a few more questions, but they’re not about violets so they’re not so interesting.

  Then a lady rings up who says she has an answer to the violet question, so Violet listens carefully again.

  “It sounds like a problem with watering,” says the lady. “The trick with watering violets is to do it from underneath, not from above. They much prefer to sit in water for a little while than be sprinkled and get water on their leaves.”

  There is something very familiar about her voice.

  “Thank you for calling. You’ve been very helpful,” says the radio host. “What was your name?”

  “Iris MacDonald,” says the lady.

  “MAMA!” yells Violet, too excited to notice that she is yelling and her throat is feeling better, Mama is not as excited as Violet, which is partly because she sloshed tea down her dressing gown when she heard Violet yelling and rushed up the stairs to see if she was being eaten by an escaped zoo animal.

  The next time the radio host gives the telephone number for the Gardening Channel, Violet writes it down in her notebook. Then she picks up the phone and dials.

  “Hello,” says the radio host. “Can you answer any of our gardening questions this morning?”

  Violet thinks.

  “I agree about watering the violets,” she says. “I am a Violet and I much prefer sitting in the bath to being sprinkled in the shower.”

  “I see,” says the radio host.

  “But that is not why I called,” says Violet. “I called because I met Iris MacDonald in the hospital waiting room when I was having my tonsillectomy.”

  It is funny for Violet to hear her own voice talking on the radio as well as through the phone.

  “I see,” says the radio host again, but he sounds as though he doesn’t quite see.

  “We were supposed to have tea together, so I could see her superarm and she could hear my opera singing voice,” says Violet. “I am going to be an opera singer on the radio,” she explains.

  “Well,” says the radio host, “you’re on the radio now. Would you like to sing a song for Iris?”

  “Yes please,” says Violet.

  She pauses for a moment just to make sure Iris MacDonald will have time to get nice and close to her radio.

  When she sings “thiiiiiings,” Violet jiggles a little bit, and her voice does sound a lot like an opera singer’s.

  “That was lovely,” says the host. “Thank you very much for calling, Violet.”

  “You’re welcome,” says Violet.

  A little while later the phone rings and it is someone from the Gardening Channel with a message for Violet and Mama from Iris MacDonald. The message is an invitation for tea tomorrow at eleven o’clock.

  This time Violet carefully writes down all the details.

  Just when Violet is thinking that eleven o’clock tomorrow will never, ever come, it finally does.

  To get to the front door of Iris MacDonald’s house you have to walk through some of her garden, and it is very beautiful. There is even a violet patch, with no spots on the leaves. They ring the doorbell and Iris MacDonald answers it. Her arm is in a plaster cast in a sling, which makes hugs tricky, but she and Violet manage anyway.

  “Thank you very much for inviting us,” says Mama.

  “Thank you for coming,” says Iris MacDonald. “I was so disappointed when I realized we’d parted without exchanging phone numbers. I couldn’t think how I was going to keep my promise!”

  Violet does not say, “I told you so,” but she does raise her eyebrows just a little bit at Mama.

  Iris MacDonald has a cake with lemon icing and a pot of tea, and there are rosy teacups on saucers. Violet and Mama help her to carry it all out from the kitchen, as it is difficult to carry lots of things at once if you are only using one arm. They sit down in the living room and Violet looks at all the little ornaments on the shelves and wonders if they are all small gifts with hidden helpfulness tucked inside them.

  “Now,” says Iris MacDonald when she has had some cake. “Even though I am older than seventy, I have never had a song written for me before. Do you think I could hear that lovely verse again?”

  “Yes,” says Violet, and she sings “Iris MacDonald’s Favorite Things,” jiggling on the final “thiiiiiiings” like a real opera singer.

  “I love it,” says Iris MacDonald. “And I can’t believe how many of my favorite things you managed to squeeze in.”

  Violet smiles. “What about your arm?” she asks. “Is it starting to feel super yet?”

  “Not really,” says Iris MacDonald. “I still keep your purple lozenge in my pocket, just in case. But if you like, I will tell you and your mama a secret about my arm.”

  Violet and Mama listen very carefully, because they both quite like secrets.

  “The real truth,” whispers Iris MacDonald, “is that both of my arms are pretty special. For all of my working life I have been a midwife, so I have helped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of mothers to give birth. That means my arms have been the first arms to hold hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of new babies. In fact, some of the babies I’ve helped to deliver have grown up and come back so I can help them deliver their babies.”

  Violet is just thinking what a good secret it is when Mama does a cough like a small explosion into her cup of tea.

  “I knew I’d seen you somewhere before,” squeaks Mama. “You were my midwife when I gave birth to Violet! We chose her name because of the perfect violet you gave me afterward.”

  The old lady Iris MacDonald’s face has the smile of someone who is not very old at all.

  “I often took flowers from my garden to give to the new mothers,” she says.

  Violet can hardly believe it.

  “I have never met anyone with arms like yours before,” she says.

  “And I have never met a real opera singer who sings on the radio before,” says Iris MacDonald.

  Before Violet goes home, Iris MacDonald gives her a little envelope and in it is a card that says:

  And tucked inside it is another perfect violet.

  Anna Branford was born on the Isle of Man and spent parts of her childhood in Africa and in Papua New Guinea. She now lives in Melbourne, Australia, with a large black cat called Florence. She writes, drinks cups of tea in her garden, and makes dolls and other small things, which she sells at early morning markets. (That’s where she first imagined Violet and her family.) You can visit Anna at annabranford.com.

  Elanna Allen lives most of the time in London with her husband and son, but sometimes you might find her in New York, visiting her old stomping grounds. At this very minute, she is in London, where she writes and illustrates children’s books and designs characters for television. She wrote and illustrated Itsy Mitsy Runs Awayand has created characters for Disney, Nickelodeon, and PBS. Whether she is in New York or London, you can always say hi to her at elannaallen.com.

  Jacket design by Lauren Rille

  Jacket illustrations and hand-lettering copyright

  © 2013 by Elanna Allen

  Atheneum Books for Young Readers

  Simon & Schuster * New York

  Meet the author, watch videos, and get extras at

  KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

  Also by Anna Branford

  Violet Mackerel’s Brilliant Plot

  Atheneum Books for Young Readers

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Anna Branford

  Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Elanna Allen

  Text was orig
inally published in 2011 by Walker Books Australia Pty Ltd.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole

  or in part in any form.

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  Also available in an Atheneum Books for Young Readers paperback edition

  Book design by Lauren Rille

  The text for this book is set in Excelsior.

  The illustrations for this book are rendered in pencil with digital ink.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Branford, Anna.

  Violet Mackerel’s remarkable recovery / Anna Branford ;

  illustrated by Elanna Allen. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: With her knack for seeing the positive, six-year-old Violet anticipates extraordinary results after getting her tonsils removed, such as making a special new friend and turning her everyday voice into an opera voice.

  ISBN 978-1-4424-3588-9 (hc)— ISBN 978-1-4424-3589-6 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-3590-2 (eBook)

  [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Sick—Fiction. 3. Tonsillectomy—Fiction.]

  I. Allen, Elanna, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.B737384Vi 2012

  [Fic]—dc23 2011023703