Title Page
Dedication
Map
Not Any Rabbit Hole
Chapter One: Invitations
Chapter Two: Basil Forest
Chapter Three: Changing Places
Chapter Four: Pawfect Presents
Chapter Five: The Music Lesson
Chapter Six: A New Plan
Chapter Seven: Stuffed
Chapter Eight: The Burrow Party
Teaser
About the Author
The Lucky Bunnies Series
Copyright
Petal couldn’t stay still as she sat behind her log desk at school on Monday morning. Her fluffy pink tail twitched and her long, floppy ears flicked from side to side.
“Petal, do you need the bathroom?” Mr. Nibble asked from his desk at the front of the classroom. As usual, the teacher was eating something. Today, it was a parsnip almost the size of him.
“No, no!” Petal squeaked. “Not at all. I am absolutely fine!”
From her desk next to Petal, Diamond frowned. Petal didn’t look fine. It wasn’t that she looked unhappy. In fact, she was smiling. She just looked as if she was bursting to do something! Diamond wondered what it might be.
She didn’t have to wait long to find out. When the bell rang for playtime, Petal hopped from her desk as if there were a firework under her tail. She called to her friends to follow her out from their classroom, which was inside a large oak tree trunk.
“Diamond, Ruby, Star, Twinkle, and Sky, come on!” Petal pulled on her friends’ paws to drag them outside. The six bunnies scampered out into the dandelion field that surrounded Dandelion School. The school was made up of five classes—with each classroom inside the trunk of a different tree.
“Ta-da!” Petal said, and she held up five things high above her pink head. As Petal was the tallest of the friends, the others couldn’t quite see what they were.
“Ooh, is it a magic trick?” Sky asked. She flipped into the air to get a better look and saw there were five dock-leaf envelopes in Petal’s paws.
Petal shook her head, making her gigantic floppy ears flap around her. “No, it’s not a magic trick—they’re invitations!”
Twinkle clapped his tiny mint-green paws together. “Invitations?” he squealed. “How furbulous! What are they for?”
Petal brought down her paws and passed the envelopes out to her friends. “You’ll have to open them to find out!” she said.
Everyone began opening their envelopes. Diamond did so carefully, putting a white claw under the flap to open it without tearing it. Star ripped into hers with her teeth, desperate to see what was inside.
“A Lucky Bunny burrow party!” Star said, reading the heading at the top of the invitation. Petal had decorated the barknote with flowers and tiny leaves, and in the middle were the words:
Where: Petal’s burrow.
When: Saturday at noon.
Don’t forget: A party rat!
“Isn’t it exciting?” Petal said. “We’ve never had a Lucky Bunny burrow party before!”
Twinkle jumped up and spun on the spot. “It’s fantabulous!” he squeaked.
“Awesome!” Ruby added, nodding her glossy red head. “But what’s a party rat?”
“Pardon?” Petal said. Ruby passed her the invitation, and Petal brought it right up to her eyes. “Oops-a-daisy! That should say party hat, not party rat!” She giggled. “Sorry!”
“Phew,” Sky chirped. “I didn’t like the sound of a party rat!”
“Will there be room in your burrow, Petal?” Star asked. “What about all of your brothers?”
“That’s absolutely the best part,” Petal explained. “Luckily, they’re all away on a school trip!” Petal had nine older brothers who went to Radish High School. Her burrow was normally so crowded there was no space to have her friends over.
“What did the party hat say to the bow tie?” Sky asked all of a sudden. Her friends shrugged.
“What?” said Petal.
“Don’t tire yourself out!” Sky laughed. “Get it? Tie-re yourself out?”
Everyone giggled, except Star, who shook her golden head and rolled her eyes. “Where do you get your jokes from, Sky?”
Sky looked shocked and put a paw to her fluffy blue chest. “I don’t get them from anywhere,” she said. “I make them all up myself!”
Diamond twitched her white whiskers and said, “I thought it was funny, Sky. My dad takes ages tying up his tie for work, and it makes me tired just watching him.”
“Hey, thanks, Diamond,” Sky replied. She turned to Petal. “So what will we be doing at the burrow party, Petal? Have you got any ideas for games?”
Petal’s smile almost reached her ears. “I have so many ideas!” she said. “I don’t know where to start! There’s pin the tail on the bunny, and musical rabbits, and the lucky daisy game. And I thought we could have carrot crisps, and blueberry ice pops, and Five-Flower Fizz drinks—”
BRIIIIIING!
The bell rang for the end of playtime before Petal could finish. As they dashed back toward their classroom in the oak tree, Ruby scampered over to Petal. “It sounds like you totally need some lists to plan your burrow party,” Ruby said, and her red curly whiskers twitched with excitement. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, please!” Petal put an arm around Ruby. “Thank you. There’s an awful lot to do, and I want it to be amazing!”
“I can’t walk home with you today,” Star said as the six friends walked out of Dandelion School at the end of the day. “I’ve got to go to Basil Forest.”
“Me too,” squeaked Twinkle.
“Ooh, me three!” added Sky, and she did a forward flip with excitement.
“Me four!” Ruby said, holding up four fingers on her paw. “How about you, Diamond and Petal? Can you come, too?”
“I can’t today,” Petal said. “Dad promised to take me to Cucumber Row to go shopping for party decorations.”
“I’ve got my extra math lesson,” said Diamond, her voice quiet and shy. “But have fun!”
Diamond and Petal waved goodbye as they turned left out of the school gates. They hopped away toward Warren Street, the maze of burrows where the bunnies lived.
Twinkle, Sky, Star, and Ruby turned right toward Sparkle River. Basil Forest was far past that—over on the other side of Bright Burrow—so far away they couldn’t even see the trees of the forest in the distance.
They were about to hop over the silver stepping stones in Sparkle River when Sky gave a shout and pointed into the sky at something speeding through the air. “Ooh, that’s lucky, we can catch the Clover Train to Basil Forest!” The Clover Train was a magical train made of giant four-leaf clover leaves that transported bunnies all around Bright Burrow. It didn’t run on the ground but flew through the air, which meant it could go anywhere.
“Awesome,” Ruby said. “We’ll be so much quicker that way!”
The four bunnies waved to stop the Clover Train, and it zoomed down toward them until it hovered just above the ground.
“All aboard, all aboard!” called the conductor from the front of the train. Star grinned—the conductor was her gran, Edna. She was the same size as Star, with the same large, pointy ears and golden fur, except Edna’s was flecked with silver.
“Hello, Gran,” said Star as she hopped onto the first four-leaf clover. It bounced a little as she jumped on, but Star knew she wouldn’t fall off—it was impossible to do so. The Clover Train kept its travelers on board like magic, no matter how fast it flew.
Edna smiled a wrinkly smile as Ruby, Twinkle, and Sky leaped onto the train behind Star. “Where would you like to go?” Star’s gran asked.
“Basil Forest, please!” the four friends said together.
Edn
a tipped her green conductor’s hat. “Basil Forest it is! All right, bunnies. Mind your tails and get ready for departure!”
The leaves of the Clover Train shuddered under their feet for a moment, then zoomed off into the air. Sky squeaked as the wind whistled past her fluffy blue ears and the train climbed up into the sky. She never got tired of riding the Clover Train—from here she could see all across Bright Burrow, from Dandelion School to Basil Forest and everything in between. They sped over Sparkle River, where some bunnies were bathing in the water. Many of the older rabbits believed swimming in the river kept them young, so they spent a lot of time there. Sky just thought it made them wrinklier! There was Pineapple Square, the main meeting place in Bright Burrow, with its rabbit-shaped clock tower. Inside the tower was the Weather Rabbit—a mechanical silver rabbit in charge of changing the weather. It was a cloudy gray day today, and Sky crossed her paws, hoping that they’d be lucky and the Weather Rabbit wouldn’t pop out to make it rain. And above them was the Luck Rainbow, seeming almost close enough to touch! The rainbow always shone over Bright Burrow, and if one of the colors was shining more brightly than the others, the bunnies believed it meant a certain type of luck was around that day.
The train zoomed over Paradise Beach, where bunnies were digging all across the sand. With a bit of luck, a magical surprise could be found deep within the beach, which attracted lots of bunnies—young and old—to dig there.
“Get ready to land!” Edna called from the front of the train, and the four-leaf-clover leaves began descending over Mirror Lake, with Basil Forest just on the other side. It landed with the tiniest of bumps on the edge of the forest.
Sky did a backflip off the train. “Thank you!” she chirruped to Edna.
“That was so awesome,” said Ruby with a wave.
“Burrow-tastic!” added Twinkle.
“Can you take us back home later?” Star asked her gran.
Edna shrugged. “If you’re lucky enough to see me with an empty train, then yes, wave me down. Those are the rules!” The bunnies of Bright Burrow could only stop the train if no one was on it—but then they could ask it to go anywhere. It meant that Edna never had two days at work that were the same!
The four bunnies waved goodbye to Edna and began scampering into the forest. “I’ve got to find some parsley for my dad to use in our supper,” Ruby said. Parents often sent their children to Basil Forest to collect herbs for cooking and healing. “How about everyone else?” Ruby asked her friends. “What do you have to get?”
“Parsley!” they all said at once.
“That’s lucky! I guess we’re all having parsley soup for supper then, hey!” Sky laughed.
Ruby pulled her list of the herbs that could be found in Basil Forest out of her schoolbag. She’d made a note of all of them, and exactly where they could be found. “The parsley patch is all the way over on the north side,” Ruby said.
Star was looking over her shoulder. “Excellent list!” she told Ruby.
The bunnies darted north through the forest, and Twinkle breathed in deeply as he went. Incredible smells of basil, oregano, rosemary, and thyme floated up his nose. The forest was one of his favorite places—the huge herbs growing everywhere made him feel as if he were in another world. But he didn’t have time to daydream today—the tiny mint-green bunny was the smallest of his friends by far, and he had to run twice as fast to keep up with the others.
At last, they reached the parsley patch, where the gigantic bright green herbs towered over the bunnies’ heads like trees. The friends chatted about Petal’s burrow party as they picked out the ripest stems.
“Hey, the games Petal has planned sound great, don’t you think?” Sky said. She leaped up and bit off a deep green piece of parsley and added it to her pile on the ground.
Star nodded and said, “I’m going to start practicing musical bunnies right away.” Her friends smiled. Star often took games a bit too seriously—but that did mean she usually won!
“Do you think she’ll have karaoke?” Twinkle squeaked. “Singing is so furbulous, I could sing all night!” He flung out his paws and began to sing, “How fluffy is that bunny in the burrow? As fluffy as fluffy can be …”
Ruby’s curly whiskers turned downward. “I don’t like singing so much,” she said. “And it’s not really a game, is it?”
“I didn’t say it was a game, Ruby,” Twinkle told her. “I just said that it’s furbulous!”
“Well, not everyone thinks that!” Ruby replied. “Why do we have to always do what you want?”
Twinkle wriggled both of his pale green ears, feeling annoyed. “I didn’t say that we did.”
“But we do, loads,” Ruby continued. She dropped her bunch of parsley and put her paws on her red hips. “Yesterday we swam in Mirror Lake because you wanted to, and on Saturday we went to the nail bar because you needed yours trimmed.”
“You didn’t have to come,” squeaked Twinkle, his voice even higher than usual. “You could have just stayed at home!”
“So you didn’t want me to be there?” said Ruby. “Thanks a LOT!” And with that she scooped up her pile of parsley and stomped off across the forest.
“Did you have to say that?” Star said to Twinkle as Ruby hopped away, soon fading to a red dot in the distance.
Now it was Twinkle who put his paws on his hips. “Say what?” he said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. It was Ruby who shouted at me!” Twinkle stomped a tiny paw on the ground. “I’m going home!” he squeaked. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow!” Before Star or Sky could say anything to stop him, Twinkle stuck the bunch of parsley he’d plucked into his mouth and ran off.
“Oh no,” said Star. “School will be difficult if Twinkle and Ruby are arguing.” She rubbed her velvety golden chin with a paw. “And what about Petal’s party?”
Sky waved a paw in the air. “They’ll be fine. It’s ages until Saturday—there’s no way they’ll still be arguing by then. In fact, I bet you anything they’ll have made up by the morning!”
Sky was wrong. Twinkle and Ruby hadn’t made up the next morning. Not at all. When Sky and Diamond scampered into the classroom—they always walked to school together because they lived in next-door burrows—Ruby had swapped desks with their classmate Toppy so she wouldn’t have to sit beside Twinkle.
“Why is Ruby sitting at Toppy’s desk?” Diamond asked Sky.
Sky put a fluffy blue paw to her forehead. “Ooh no. They had an argument yesterday while we were picking parsley at Basil Forest,” Sky explained. “I thought they would have made up by now!”
Mr. Nibble began to take attendance, chewing a stem of lemongrass at the side of his mouth as he spoke. “Diamond? Flo? Haybury? Jewel? Lopsy? Petal? Rainbow? Ruby? Sky? Star? Toppy? Twinkle? Twinkle … ?”
Everyone replied yes to their name—apart from Twinkle. He was late—but that was normal for him. He was hardly ever on time for anything, not even school.
“Do you think Twinkle is so upset he’s not coming today?” Star whispered to Sky.
Sky gulped. She hadn’t thought of that. But the argument between Twinkle and Ruby hadn’t been that bad. Sky couldn’t even remember what it was about, really.
Just then a blur of mint-green fur shot into the classroom. “Sorry I’m late, Mr. Nibble!” Twinkle squeaked.
Sky let out a long sigh of relief.
Twinkle hopped to his log desk and settled himself down. Then he turned to the left—where Ruby normally sat—and frowned.
Ooh no, he’s seen that Ruby’s changed places! thought Sky.
Twinkle looked around the classroom, squinting and twitching his tiny nose. When he spotted Ruby, all the way over on the other side of the tree-trunk classroom, he scowled and shook his head.
“Uh-oh,” Star said under her breath.
Petal was twisting her head left and right, confused. “What’s going on?” Petal whispered to Star.
“They had a small … disagreement yesterday,” Star said.
“Oh dear! That’s terrible.” Petal put her pink head in her paws. She hated it when her friends argued.
“But I’m super sure they’ll make up today!” Sky chirruped, not very quietly.
Mr. Nibble raised his black-and-white head and took the stem of lemongrass from his mouth. “What are you chattering about back there?” he asked with a frown.
“Nothing, Mr. Nibble!” Star said quickly.
“Hmm, it didn’t sound like nothing,” their teacher replied. “Anyway, there’s no time for chatting this morning—take out your reading books, please. We’re going to continue where we left off yesterday with The Tale of Peter Rabbit, page eight. Twinkle, can you read the first page, please?”
Twinkle began reading aloud in his squeaky, high voice. “ ‘Mr. McGregor was quite sure that Peter was somewhere in the toolshed, perhaps hidden underneath a flowerpot. He began to turn them over carefully, looking under each.’ ” Twinkle did the actions as he read, pretending to turn over imaginary flowerpots. It looked as if he was enjoying himself a lot.
The students took turns reading a page aloud. Some of the bunnies enjoyed it more than others. Diamond didn’t like reading out loud at all—she felt shy with everyone listening to her, and her quiet voice came out in barely a whisper. But Mr. Nibble clapped when she’d finished. “That was your best reading yet, Diamond,” he said. “Well done.”
Diamond felt her white cheeks blush as Sky started to read the next page. She put on funny voices for the different characters, which made her classmates laugh.
“Thank you, Sky. That was really … entertaining,” said Mr. Nibble, just as the bell rang for playtime.
As Oak Class skipped out of the tree trunk to the dandelion field, Star had almost forgotten about Ruby’s and Twinkle’s argument. Then she saw that the two bunnies were glaring at each other while the others munched on dandelion flowers.
“Whatever is wrong?” asked Petal, looking between the two bunnies. “What happened yesterday? Star said you had a disagreement?”
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