CHAPTER 1: THE 143-STORY TREEHOUSE
Hi, my name is Andy.
This is my friend Terry.
We live in a tree.
Well, when I say “tree,” I mean treehouse. And when I say “treehouse,” I don’t just mean any old treehouse—I mean a 143-story treehouse. (It used to be a 130-story treehouse, but we’ve added another 13 stories.)
So what are you waiting for?Come on up!
We’ve got a word-o-matic (it knows every word in the whole world!),
a recycling depot,
a wrecking ball,
a camping ground,
a too-hard basket,
a SUPER BIG STUFF story,
a baked bean geyser (it erupts on the hour, every hour),
a Ye Olde Worlde Historical Village,
a fish milkshake bar (we hate them, but the penguins love them!),
a complaining room,
a spooky graveyard (where it’s always midnight, even in the middle of the day),
a toffee-apple orchard guarded by a kind scarecrow,
and a deep, dark cave with a real, live fire-breathing dragon (well, we haven’t actually ever seen it, but we’re pretty sure it’s there).
As well as being our home, the treehouse is where we make books together. I write the words, and Terry draws the pictures.
As you can see, we’ve been doing this for quite a while now.
It’s not always easy. Sometimes we have unexpected visitors …
but we always get our book done in the end.
CHAPTER 2: QUAZJEX?!
If you’re like most of our readers, you’re probably wondering what my favorite word in the whole world is. Well, it’s “Andy,” of course! It’s the best word with the best letters.
“A is for Awesome,
N is for Never-wrong,
D is for Dazzling, and
Y is for—”
“Your turn,” says Terry.
“Please don’t interrupt me, Terry,” I say.
“But it’s your turn!”
Excuse me, readers. As you can see, I’m in the middle of playing a game of Scrabble with Terry. Now let me see … Hang on, what’s that word?
“Quazjex?” I say. “What’s that? That’s not a word!”
“Yes it is,” says Terry.
“What does it mean?” I say.
“It means I win,” says Terry. “Because I used up all my letters and I got 260 points!”
“It means you cheated!” I say. “There’s no such word as ‘quazjex.’”
“Yes, there is,” says Terry.
“Prove it, then,” I say. “Use it in a sentence.”
“Easy,” says Terry. “I got a new pet axolotl and its name is Quazjex!”
“That doesn’t count,” I say. “You can’t use proper nouns in Scrabble.”
“What about your name?” says Terry. “That’s a proper noun, and you’ve used it over and over. If you can have ‘Andy,’ then I can have ‘quazjex.’”
“‘Andy’ may be a proper noun,” I say, “but at least it’s a proper proper noun.”
“So is ‘quazjex,’” says Terry.
“Why don’t we let the word-o-matic decide?” I say. “Hey, word-o-matic, is Quazjex a real name?”
The word-o-matic repeats the word.
Quazjex! Quazjex! Quazjex!
Smoke starts pouring out of the machine.
Does not compute. Does not compute. Does not compute. Does not compute. Does not—
“Uh-oh, it’s going to blow!” I say. “Duck!”
Terry and I throw ourselves to the floor and cover our heads.
“Now look what you’ve done!” I say. “Your fake word made the word-o-matic explode!”
“Yeah,” says Terry, laughing. “There are words everywhere!”
“IT’S NOT FUNNY!” I shout. “It’s going to take FOREVER to get all these words back into the machine! There are at least five thousand of them!”
“I know,” says Terry, “and some of them are pretty funny, too. Look at this one: flumadiddle. Hilarious! I wonder what it means.”
“Well, we’ll never know, will we?” I yell. “Because you broke the word-o-matic! You break everything!”
“Calm down, Andy,” says Terry. “I can fix it.”
“I AM CALM!” I shout.
“No, you’re not,” says Terry. “You’re really angry.”
“I’M NOT ANGRY!” I shout even louder.
“Yes, you are,” says Terry. “In fact, now that I think about it, you’ve been angry a lot lately. You’ve been losing your temper over really little things.”
Text copyright © 2021 by Backyard Stories Pty Ltd.
