My dad ran a bookshop in Cambridge, and my big sister and I used to go there and read until my dad had finished work and could take us back home. By the time I was eleven, I had lots of brothers and sisters. Our house wasn’t big enough and we got squeezed for space. Most people buy a bigger house if they can, but my parents bought a boat called DIMCYL instead! She was fifty two feet long and twelve feet wide, and we were even more squeezed for space.
My friends thought it must be great living on a boat. They didn’t realise how squashed up we were. Imagine trying to share a double cabin with bunk beds and two square yards of floor with your brother or sister. When you try to get dressed in the morning, it’s like trying to share one of those cubicles at the swimming baths.
The boat was moored at the end of an orchard. To get to school, my big sister and I had to get past the three vicious geese that were supposed to be cheap mowing machines, get our bikes out of the shed, and cycle three miles across Cambridge. I’m still a bit nervous of geese!
And I had a Siamese cat called Ayuthia. She didn’t like the geese, either!
In the school holidays when my dad could get time off work, we untied the mooring ropes and off we went. We even crossed the Channel and went from Holland to Belgium and France along rivers and canals. The boat had to be repaired in Belgium, which meant that we couldn’t get back to England in time for school. That didn’t worry me. We had plenty of books, and we played lots of Canasta.
On the boat or on shore, I was always reading.
Life was getting stormy on the boat, and reading helped me to escape into another world. In the end, my mum and dad decided to get divorced, and that was the end of living on the boat. My dad went off to live somewhere else, and the rest of us – plus Ayuthia – went back to living on the shore.
Eventually my mother and all five children moved to Oxford, where we shared a very large house with an uncle and aunt and their three children. I was old enough to go out to work now, and I went to work in a children’s home. There I found out what troubled lives some kids have. You can’t help wondering why some people have lots of love, and others have so little.
These are the things that I think about; and these are the things that I write about. Real things that happen. Kids that manage to put their lives together in spite of everything. But sometimes I don’t want to be serious, I want to be funny. That’s when I write about wacky things that could never happen.
I hope you will enjoy my stories!
Nicki Cornwell
Christophe’s Story
Short-listed for the Portsmouth Book Award
Novel for 8+, FRANCES LINCOLN 2006, published 2006
ISBN 10: 1 -84507 521 8 (paperback)
ISBN 13: 978 1 84507 521 7 (hardback)
This is a story about an eight year old boy who is a refugee from Rwanda. He is starting at a new school in London. He has a story inside him, and this story wants to be told. But with a new country, a new school and a new language to cope with, Christophe can’t find the right words. He wants to tell the whole school why he had to leave Rwanda, why he has a scar made by a bullet from a soldier’s gun and what happened to his baby brother, but has he got the courage to be a storyteller? Christophe must find a way to break through all these barriers so that he can share his story with everyone.
I wrote this story after talking to asylum-seekers and refugees and hearing about some of the dreadful things that have happened to them.
To read the opening pages of Christophe's Story, Click Here
To read reviews for Christophe's Story, Click Here
Mira’s Butterflies
Mira’s Butterflies; short story in Lines in the Sand, ed Hoffman & Lassiter,
FRANCES LINCOLN 2003(ISBN 0 7 112 22827)
Lines in the Sand is a collection of stories and poems about war and peace. Money from buying this book will go to help children injured in the war in Iraq.
Mira’s Butterflies is one of the stories in the book.
Mira’s Butterflies tells the story of a man with dark thoughts who envies his neighbour’s happiness and contentment. He persuades his kind and generous neighbour to share her house with him. Soon his dark thoughts invade her peace and quiet. It’s a story about greed and selfishness, and the problem of sharing things with someone else. It’s also a story about the way that arguments make every one unhappy if you don’t sort things out.
To read the opening paragraphs of Mira's Butterflies, Click Here
Baa & the Angels
Baa & the Angels; short story in Give me Shelter,
ed Tony Bradman; FRANCES LINCOLN, published 2007
ISBN: 978 1 84507 522 4 (hardcover)
Give me Shelter is a collection of stories about asylum seekers. In Baa & the Angels, Sabine’s life changes dramatically when her father is caught up in the war in the Congo and killed. Sabine has to escape from the country with her mother and three little brothers and sisters. She loses her father, her home, her school, and her friends. Life will never be the same again!
To read the opening pages of Baa & the Angels, Click Here
VEGETARIAN CONUNDRUM
How can sheep
be made of meat
if all they eat
is grass?
And how can eating
grass-made sheep
be called
carnivorous?
The body of an Octopus
is tucked up in its head;
and where its body ought to be,
its tickles grow instead
SQUIRMING WORMS
Worms squirm, no doubt of that;
they've all got squirming habits.
if they'd got legs to run away,
they'd probably be rabbits!
Every time they're picked upon,
they blush and wriggle round
as if they're trying very hard
to vanish in the ground.
They seem to think assertiveness
is dangerous to try,
so others trample over them
and then they wonder why.
But, candidly, I must admit,
I'm puzzled they're so fat.
with so much walking over them
NO PERSONALITY!
Do you, like the Chameleon,
take on other peoples' hues?
and nothing much to lose!
ROSIE MY HIPPOPOTAMUS
Why does everyone have to be the same?
Now Rosie hates puddles and loathes getting wet;
At the sight of a bath, she breaks out in a sweat!
Whenever it rains, we have to take taxis
And bribe dear Rosie with hamburgher maxis
And thousands of chips. She’s as round as a top;
If she goes on eating, she's sure to go pop!
It’s clear there's a problem (I've no idea why),
And something is needed to keep her feet dry
So we went to the shops to buy Wellington Boots,
But the shoe shop assistants burst out into hoots.
They gathered around, all the better to stare:
Each arrogant creep had his nose in the air!
They hummed and they ha'ad, and they cried "It's a bore!
Two boots aren't enough, she will have to have four!
The front and the back are different sizes;
The soles aren't the same, and nor are the thighzes!
The lady's quite strange, and she don't fit the norm;
She'd better lose weight and refashion her form.
Two legs need to go, that's the best thing to do!
We'll sort out her feet when she's only got two!"
I saw Rosie blush and I yelled at the brutes,
"We don't want your sneers or your Wellington Boots!"
We called for a cab to take us to Tesco
And sorted a way of travelling alfresco!
So now through the puddles she merrily sploshes,
Her feet safely swathed in plastic galoshes!*
*in plastic bags from Tesco’s!
HOW I HATE CONCEITED PEOPLE!
If that puffed up Armadillo
had a perforated skin,
hot air could come hissing out
and doubts come pouring in!
KANGA, KANGA, ANGEROO
Kanga, kanga angeroo,
look at what they did to you!
Lumpy body, flapping skin,
top half elegant and thin,
angry kanga, kangaroo,
this is what they did to you!
What did parents want for you,
angry little kangaroo?
Perfect body, flawless skin,
not too fat and not too thin;
but you had to fit the space
in your parent's pocket place.
Angry kanga, kangaroo,
this is what they did to you!
Pockets wouldn't stretch too far:
that is why you're how you are!
Will your children be the same?
Will they, too, their parents blame?
NEVER TRUST A CROCODILE!
The crocodile is full of guile
Don’t listen to his needs
For, closer come, and you become
The food on which he feeds
If there is anything you want to say to me about the stories I have written, you can send an email to me by clicking HERE
All content, including hand-drawn pictures, on this site is © Nicki Cornwell 2006