When Kaolin and Olive arrived at Half Hitch school one Friday morning they went to Mrs Kipper’s classroom as normal but found all their friends standing outside the locked door.
“What’s the matter, why can’t we go inside?” asked Kaolin.
“We don’t know where Mrs Kipper is!” replied Mateo.
“Someone said she’s gone on holiday to another planet,” said Alexis, excitedly.
“Another planet?” said Olive. “But how?”
Vaila was looking forward to her birthday more than any birthday she’d had before. Because whilst her present was normally a surprise - this year she knew exactly what she was getting and it was the only thing she wanted in the world.
She was getting not one kitten, but two.
Because she knew what she was getting, and because she knew that there was one boy kitten and one girl kitten, she had already named them before they arrived. They were to be called: Pearl and Ocean.
Jennifer was in Mr Bloom’s class at Half Hitch Elementary. The classroom was the same size as Mrs Kipper’s next door, and everyone sat with their tables in a big circle so everyone could look at each other.
Mr Bloom, who Jennifer thought was a wonderful teacher, normally stood in the middle of this circle. He had a wonderful voice, and everyone enjoyed listening to him and asking questions. The only time he’d stop with his lesson is when the green speaker in the far high corner of the classroom crackled in to life - because this was the speaker that Mrs Perrinpeas, the headmistress, would use for special announcements.
Nolan and Sebastian would often go over to play at each other’s houses, but if he was being honest; Nolan preferred going to Sebastian’s house the most. Because in his garden, Sebastian had the most incredible treehouse - easily the best that Nolan ever seen.
If you looked from the back door of the house, it looked quite small and simple. Just a ladder going up into a square wooden hut in the lower branches of the large oak tree. But once you’d climbed up into that, there was another passage leading off the far wall of the room which led to a higher room at the back of the tree. And from there, you could climb up through the ceiling into a wooden shaft - with slats on the inside for your hands and feet to grip onto - into another higher room right in the middle of the enormous oak. And from there, a rope ladder took you up to an open platform near the top of the tree which was SO high that you could look over Sebastian’s house in one direction, and far, far over the fields towards the Meadows in the other direction.
