Kids Into Books: A Whistle from the Blunder

Author: Diana Noonan

Age: 10+ years

Illustrator: Jenny Cooper

Publisher: Longacre Press, $14.95


"Go away," whispered Cadence to the blasting hollow whistle that had woken her. "You're not real. You're not real."

She wriggled her fingers into her ears, ground her teeth hard together, and waited for the next wailing blast. Only when it had come and gone again, leaving a thin trail of noise drifting about the upstairs room, did she open her eyes.

The lace curtains were moving; gently stirring at the half open casement window as though disturbed by a leaping cat or a light puff of wind. But there was no cat in this house and Cadence knew, even before she slipped out of bed and crossed the floor to pull back the curtains that, outside, the morning would be still. This was the third time it had happened.

It was six a.m. - exactly. Her little cousin, Josh, was still asleep, a small grey hump in his bed on the other side of the room; nothing would wake him. Outside, a bright carpet of moisture glistened on the lawn and on the paddocks across the road. It sparkled on the backs of the grazing sheep and on the tufts of raw wool caught on the wire of the fences. Far across the paddocks, wisps of early morning mist drifted up from the meandering brown river and disappeared into the forest. A dawn chorus of birds was gathering volume.