Kids into books: Red Sky in the Morning

This week's title: Red Sky in the Morning

Author: Elizabeth Laird

Illustrator: Angelo Rinaldi

Publisher:Macmillan, $13.95

Age Group: 10 years +


There wasn't a sound coming from her room. I knelt down, and looked through the keyhole. She always has a nightlight on because she thinks she's so delicious that witches are just dying to come and eat her in the night, so I could see clearly enough that she was fast asleep.

'Well,' I thought, 'that gives me one less thing to worry about,' but at the same time I almost wished Katy had been awake, because I hadn't got anything to do. I certainly wasn't intending to betray Mum by making Dad a cup of tea.

Then I realised that I could at least phone Granny, which Dad seemed to have forgotten about, so I went downstairs to the phone in the hall, and was just beginning to dial when the front door bell went. The ambulance had come.

There were only two ambulance men but they filled up our small downstairs hall completely. It's so narrow that if two people meet, one of them has to turn sideways and stand against the wall while the other squashes past. I used to think of ways of making sure it wasn't me who had to stand against the wall, like pretending, if I was holding something, that it was very heavy, or being in a hurry for the loo, but I stopped all that kind of childish thing years ago.

Still, I've never stopped minding that our hall is so mean and small, not like Debbie's (she used to be my best friend), and suddenly I got worried about it.