By Steve Bynghall
Steve Bynghall lives in London, England. Other poems about Brooke and her useless Dad appear on Smories.com. Visit http://www.smories.com/author/steve-bynghall/ for more details. If you want to be notified when a new Brooke story will be appearing please email [email protected].
Brooke’s Dad was the captain
Of the world’s most hopeless boat
It was ramshackle and rotten
It could hardly stay afloat!
By Mark L. Glosser
“Hey,” Eric yelped as he watched his younger brother Ian shake a huge glob of ketchup onto his sandwich. “You emptied the bottle. What am I supposed to put on my hot dog?”
“Mom got another bottle,” Ian mumbled as he stuffed half the sandwich in his mouth, Go look in the refrigerator.”
Eric stomped to the refrigerator and pulled out a weird shaped-bottle. “Genie Ketchup Company? I never heard of this brand,” said Eric as he unscrewed the lid.
A moment after the lid came off; all the ketchup in the bottle squirted to the ceiling, and started to spin like a tornado.Eric and Ian dove under the table.
A flash of light momentarily blinded them. When their vision cleared they saw a man with long, black hair floating in mid-air. His red pants barely fit over his bulging belly, and his white shirt was splattered with ketchup.
Peeking out from under the table Eric asked in a trembling voice, “Who are you?”
The strange visitor floated down from the ceiling and looked under the table. “I’m the Ketchup Bottle Genie. Haven’t you heard of me?”
Pink Tentacle has an amazing collection of freakishly bizarre Japanese children’s book illustrations by Gojin Ishihara from the 1970s. His marvelously comforting work features various humans being eaten, strangled, decapitated, tortured and generally threatened by every sort of demonic beast possible to imagine.
Well worth your time.
Billy’s Picture Book by Terry Bisson, a collection of jarringly twisted short stories for adult children, has a set of illustrations by Rudy Rucker. The stories follow one precocious Billy through the harrowing and sickening ordeal of being a kid. If your kid has a mind that is easily warped or disturbed or if your kid is just plain crazy, don’t read these stories to them! But if your kid has a casual interest in murder and mayhem, well this might be just the book for the little monster.
The book is available as a free e-book and as a paperback for purchase.
DOWNLOAD PINOCCHIO – CHAPTER 12
Per l’Italia! More of our story!
This is one of the great gifts from Italy to the children of the world. Carlo Collodi’s 1883 masterpiece, The Adventures of Pinocchio, is the story of the wooden marionette who desperately wants to be a real boy. His adventures are full of mischief, wonder, sadness, joy, treachery, danger and all the exuberant life of a real Italian boy. This is the English translation by Carol Della Chiesa.
Subscribe to audio with iTunes
Reading and illustration by Alessandro Cima
All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute copies of our MP3 audio or video stories. They are for your personal use. If you choose to burn our MP3 stories onto a personal CD, do not make copies of the CD or distribute them to other people. Also, do not sell CDs containing our audio stories. All audio stories are copyrighted by Candlelight Stories, Inc.
DOWNLOAD PINOCCHIO – CHAPTER 11
Per l’Italia! More of our story!
This is one of the great gifts from Italy to the children of the world. Carlo Collodi’s 1883 masterpiece, The Adventures of Pinocchio, is the story of the wooden marionette who desperately wants to be a real boy. His adventures are full of mischief, wonder, sadness, joy, treachery, danger and all the exuberant life of a real Italian boy. This is the English translation by Carol Della Chiesa.
Subscribe to audio with iTunes
Reading and illustration by Alessandro Cima
All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute copies of our MP3 audio or video stories. They are for your personal use. If you choose to burn our MP3 stories onto a personal CD, do not make copies of the CD or distribute them to other people. Also, do not sell CDs containing our audio stories. All audio stories are copyrighted by Candlelight Stories, Inc.