Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf Read online

  ‘Oh, just bird talk. Then I don’t think I want it,’ said Polly. She was beginning to be a little suspicious.

  ‘Oh no,’ said the wolf hastily. ‘It can say words too. It says “Mum” and “Dad”, and “Pretty Polly”,’ he added.

  ‘It sounds lovely,’ said Polly. ‘But can it talk to you? I only want a bird who can carry on a conversation.’

  ‘Oh yes, we had ever such a long talk coming up the hill,’ the wolf assured her.

  ‘What did you talk about?’ asked Polly.

  ‘Well, the weather,’ said the wolf, ‘and how hungry it makes us. And about Christmas dinner. And – and – the weather – and being very hungry.’

  ‘What did the bird say it ate?’ asked Polly.

  The wolf was beginning to enjoy himself. Obviously Polly was interested now, and at any moment she would open the door to be given the parcel, and then he would be able to gobble her up.

  ‘The bird said it ate gooseberries and chocolate creams,’ he said, inventing wildly. ‘So then I said I wouldn’t like that at all. Not solid enough for me, I said. Give me a juicy little g–’ he stopped himself just in time.

  ‘A juicy little what?’ asked Polly.

  ‘A juicy little grilled steak,’ said the wolf hastily.

  ‘And what did the bird say then?’

  ‘He said, “Well, that may be all very well for a wolf”–’

  ‘Oho!’ said Polly. ‘So that’s what you are! Not a postman at all, nothing but a wolf. Now listen, Wolf. Go away, and take your parcel, which I don’t want, because it isn’t a bird in a cage or anything like it, and don’t come back either in your own skin or dressed up as anyone else, because whatever you do, I shan’t let you catch me, now or ever. Happy Christmas, Wolf.’ She shut the letter-box lid.

  So the wolf did not get his Christmas dinner after all.

  13. A Short Story

  Outside Polly’s house the lawn was white with daisies in the spring, and one day Polly, looking out of the window, saw the wolf, sitting on the grass busily taking the petals one by one, off a daisy. He was muttering to himself.

  Polly leaned a little further, and rather dangerously, out of the window to listen. He wasn’t saying, ‘She loves me, she loves me not,’ as you or I might, but, ‘I get her, I don’t get her, I get her, I don’t get her.’

  ‘Bother,’ he ended suddenly, throwing away a stalk with no petals left on it. Obviously he had not got the answer he wanted. He picked another flower and started again.

  ‘I get her,’ he announced loudly, looking up at the house triumphantly, as he came to the end of his daisy.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ said Polly. ‘I saw you take off two petals together and count them as one. Cheating, Wolf, that is, and very unfair.’

  ‘I didn’t think anyone was looking,’ the wolf said. ‘You must have terribly good eyesight to be able to see from there.’

  ‘I have,’ said Polly. ‘But even if I hadn’t you ought not to cheat. You don’t deserve to get anyone or anything if you cheat because no one is looking.’

  ‘So you don’t think I shall get you then?’ the wolf asked, disappointed.

  ‘Not on that daisy,’ Polly answered.

  ‘On the others?’ the wolf asked hopefully.

  ‘If you do them all,’ Polly answered decidedly.

  ‘Do you mean I’ve got to do the whole lot?’ the wolf said in despair. He looked round the lawn. ‘Why, there are hundreds here,’ he protested. ‘It would take me years to take the petals off all of them.’

  ‘But you’ll never know if you’re going to get me or not unless you do,’ Polly insisted.

  ‘But by the time I’ve finished these daisies there’ll probably be some more coming up.’

  ‘It will keep you rather busy,’ Polly admitted. ‘But I expect you’ll get through quite a lot if you stick to it. Besides you’ll get quicker in time. Practice, you know,’ she said encouragingly.

  ‘But my paws are so clumsy,’ the wolf protested. ‘It isn’t as if I had neat little hands like you.’

  ‘You’ve quite nice paws, for a wolf,’ Polly said kindly.

  ‘You wouldn’t like to help me, I suppose?’ the wolf asked hopefully.

  ‘No thank you,’ said Polly. ‘I’ve got quite a lot of other things I want to do.’

  ‘If I get through all these daisies,’ said the wolf, ‘and it ends up that I’m going to get you at last, will you agree to come along quietly, without any fuss?’

  Polly looked round the lawn. There were hundreds, probably thousands of daisies. But then the wolf might get really quick at taking the petals off. Or he might cheat.

  ‘This isn’t all the daisies in the world, Wolf,’ Polly pointed out.

  ‘Oh but surely there are enough here?’ the wolf almost wailed.

  ‘Quite enough,’ Polly said. ‘But, of course, you’ll never know if it’s the truth until you’ve got to the last daisy. And of course I couldn’t agree to be eaten quietly, without any fuss, if I didn’t know it was the truth.’

  ‘You mean, I’ve got to unpick all the daisies there are, anywhere, everywhere?’ cried the wolf.

  ‘And when you get to the very last, if it says you are going to get me, I’ll come,’ said clever Polly. ‘You can start here,’ she added. ‘There are a nice lot here to begin with.’

  So the wolf spends his time picking daisies on Polly’s lawn, and as there are plenty of daisies in the world, Polly thinks it will be a long time before he finds out whether or not he will ever get her. A Very Long Time.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CATHERINE STORR

  1913 Born Catherine Cole on 21 July in Kensington, London

  1924–31 Catherine is a pupil at St Paul’s Girls’ School in London where she is lucky enough to be taught by Gustav Holst, the music teacher at the school, learning to play the piano and the organ, eventually becoming the organist for the daily morning service at the school

  1931 Catherine is accepted at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studies English literature

  1937 Catherine writes her first children’s story, Ingeborg and Ruthy. Ruthy was the name of her much-loved doll as a child

  1940 Ingeborg and Ruthy is published by George G. Harrap & Co. Catherine returns to Cambridge to study medicine. At Cambridge she meets and falls in love with Anthony Storr, a fellow medical student

  1942 Catherine and Anthony marry

  1944 Catherine and Anthony qualify as doctors. Both also start training in psychiatry. Catherine gives birth to the first of three daughters1950–63 Catherine works part-time as a senior medical officer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the Middlesex Hospital and also writes stories for children. As her daughters grow older, she writes books for older children

  1952 Her first two books are published: Stories for Jane and Clever Polly, and other stories

  1955 Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf is published and becomes hugely popular

  1957 A sequel, Polly and the Wolf Again, is published

  1958 Marianne Dreams, a novel for older children, is published. It has has remained in print ever since and has been published in many foreign languages

  1960 Marianne and Mark (the sequel to Marianne Dreams) is published

  1961 Catherine helps to set up the Charlotte M. Yonge Society, devoted to studying the Victorian novelist who was a bestselling author of her time

  1966 Takes on a new job as an editor at Penguin Books and continues writing

  1971 Thursday, a novel for young adults, is published

  2001 Catherine dies aged eighty-seven on 8 January in London; her last book is published in the autumn

  Interesting Facts

  From very early childhood it was always Catherine’s ambition to become a writer. She wrote over forty books for children and many novels, plays and works of non-fiction for adults.

  Catherine had three daughters, Sophia, Polly and Emma.

  Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf has remained
in print ever since its first publication in 1955.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  MARJORIE-ANN WATTS

  Marjorie-Ann Watts comes from a very creative family. Her father was a graphic artist and a cartoonist for a magazine called Punch, and both her mother and grandmother were writers. Marjorie-Ann trained as a painter and illustrator at the Chelsea School of Art in London, and worked as an art editor and typographer before writing and illustrating her own books for children. She has also written a collection of short stories called Are They Funny, Are They Dead?, and a guide to European painting for young people. Her most recent book, Slideshow: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, was published in 2014 by Quartet.

  Interesting Fact

  When she illustrated the Clever Polly stories, Marjorie-Ann used Catherine Storr’s daughter Polly as a model – so the drawings in this book are of the real Polly!

  Where did the Story Come From?

  The first Clever Polly book was written by Catherine Storr for her own daughter, Polly, who was frightened by wolves and believed there was one hiding under her bed. The story talks about Polly’s fears and then dispels them in a humorous way. The story became the inspiration for more stories about Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf, which have reassured and entertained many other children, too.

  Guess Who?

  A ‘I have planted a pip of a grape. This pip will grow into a vine and the vine will climb up the house and I shall climb up the vine.’

  B ‘I don’t want my nice little Polly eaten up by a wolf.’

  C ‘I know who you are and I won’t open the door on any account.’

  D ‘It’s not safe. Treacherous beasts, wolves.’

  ANSWERS:

  A) The wolf

  B) Polly’s grandmother

  C) Polly

  D) The zoo-keeper

  Words Glorious Words!

  Lots of words have several different meanings – here are a few you’ll find in this Puffin book. Use a dictionary or look them up online to find other definitions.

  crestfallen sad and disappointed

  disconsolately hopelessly unhappy

  implore to beg someone desperately

  indignantly showing anger at what is seen as unfair treatment

  plaintively sounding sad and mournful

  sheepish feeling embarrassment from shame or lack of self-confidence

  scrutinize examine or inspect closely

  Did You Know?

  Wolves only go hunting when they are hungry, and can wander around for eight to ten hours a day looking for prey.

  Wolves tend to mate for life, and they are devoted parents.

  A wolf puppy’s eyes are blue when they are first born. Their eyes turn yellow by the time they are eight months old.

  Quiz

  Thinking caps on – let’s see how much you can remember! Answers are on the next page. (No peeking!)

  1 How many slices of chocolate cake does the wolf eat in Clever Polly?

  a) Two slices

  b) Four slices

  c) Six slices

  d) He doesn’t eat any chocolate cake

  2 What does the wolf pull out of his suitcase in ‘Huff, Puff’ to help him blow Polly’s house down?

  a) Bellows

  b) A book called How to Become an Athlete

  c) A wind machine

  d) A fan

  3 What does the wolf say about Wednesday’s child in ‘Monday’s Child’?

  a) Wednesday’s child has far to go

  b) Wednesday’s child is full of woe

  c) Wednesday’s child is best in pie

  d) Wednesday’s child is good to fry

  4 What is the first thing that Polly gives the wolf to help him escape in ‘The Wolf in the Zoo’?

  a) A spade

  b) A key

  c) A file

  d) Sleeping medicine

  5 Who does Polly tell the wolf she is posting a letter to in ‘Polly Goes for a Walk’?

  a) Her aunt

  b) The animal pound

  c) The manager of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children

  d) Her best friend

  ANSWERS:

  1) c

  2) a

  3) d

  4) b

  5) c

  Make and Do

  Bake your own chocolate cake to keep the wolf at bay! Make sure you’ve got an adult to help you with this delicious recipe.

  YOU WILL NEED:

  ❋ 175g unsalted butter, softened

  ❋ 175g caster sugar

  ❋ 3 large eggs

  ❋ 150g self-raising flour

  ❋ 50g cocoa powder

  ❋ 1 teaspoon baking powder

  ❋ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  ❋ 20cm round cake tin, greased and lined with baking paper

  1 Preheat the oven to 175oC (gas mark 4).

  2 Mix the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl (make sure it’s big enough for all the ingredients!).

  3 Add the rest of the ingredients and beat together with an electric whisk or wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth.

  4 Pour the mixture into your cake tin and pop it into the oven.

  5 Bake for about 45 minutes, or until your cake looks golden and fully risen. Ask a grown-up to help you check the cake is full risen by sticking a skewer in the middle. If it comes out clean (with no cake mixture stuck to it) then the cake is ready to be taken out of the oven.

  6 Enjoy!

  The first ever Guinness Book of Records is published.

  Birds Eye cod fish fingers are introduced in Britain.

  C. S. Lewis’s book The Magician’s Nephew – the sixth instalment in The Chronicles of Narnia – is published.

  Puffin Writing Tip

  Listen to your favourite piece of music, then write about what you imagine as it plays.

  If you have enjoyed Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf you may like to read the next adventures of Polly and the very, very stupid wolf in Polly and the Wolf Again …

  Catherine Storr

  POLLY AND THE WOLF AGAIN

  1. The Clever Wolf and Poor Stupid Little Polly (1)

  The wolf sat at home in his kitchen, where he usually enjoyed himself so much; his elbows were on the table, and he was chewing, but there was no feeling of peace, of comfortable fullness, of not being likely to be hungry again for several hours, which was how the wolf liked to feel in his own house.

  The table was covered with sheets of paper. Some of them had only a word or two written on them, some had a whole sentence. Most of them were blank.

  Presently the wolf sighed, spat out the object he had been chewing – it was a pencil – and tried again. On a large, clean sheet of paper he wrote, laboriously:

  ‘One day the Clever Wolf caught Polly and ate her all up!’

  He stopped. He read what he had written. Then he read it again. He put the pencil back between his teeth and began to search among the sheets of paper for something. When he found it, he opened it flat on the table and leant over it, spelling out the longer words as he read. It was a book.

  But reading did not seem much more satisfactory than writing. Every now and then the wolf snarled, and at last he shut the book up with a snap and pushed it away from him; but as he did so, his eyes fell on the cover, and the name of the book, printed there in large black letters:

  CLEVER POLLY AND THE STUPID WOLF

  ‘It’s so unfair!’ he muttered angrily to himself. ‘Clever Polly, indeed! Just because she’s managed to escape me for a time. And calling me stupid! Me! Why, I always used to win when we played Hide the Piglet as wolf cubs. “Stupid Wolf!” I’ll show them. I’ll write a book full of stories which will show how clever I am – far cleverer than that silly little Polly. I’ll start the story of my life now, and then everyone will be able to see that it’s not me that is stupid.’

  He pulled another sheet of paper towards him.

  ‘I was born,’ he began writing in his untidy sprawling hand, ‘in a
large and comfortable hole, in the year –’

  He stopped.

  ‘Well, I know I’m about eleven,’ he said to himself. ‘So if I take eleven away from now, I shall know when I was born. Eleven away from … eleven away from … What am I taking eleven away from?’

  ‘I’ll do it with beans!’ he thought, encouraging himself. ‘It’s always easier with beans.’

  Leaving his pencil on the table, he got up and fetched a large canister of dried beans from a shelf over the stove. He shook a small shower out on the table; one or two fell on the floor.

  ‘Nine, ten, eleven,’ counted the wolf. He tipped the spare beans back into the canister.

  ‘But I’m taking eleven away from something,’ he remembered. He looked doubtfully into the tin and tipped it a little to see how full it was. The beans made an agreeable rattling sound as they slid about inside, and the wolf shook the canister gently several times to hear it again.

  ‘There seem to be an awful lot of beans in there,’ he said aloud. ‘I wonder just what I’ve got to take eleven away from?’

  He sat down to consider the point. Could it be eleven? He spread the eleven beans out on the table and looked at them. Then he took eleven beans off the table, counting them one by one.

  ‘Eleven away leaves none. So eleven years ago was nothing. The year nothing. It seems a very long time ago.’

  The wolf was puzzled. It did certainly seem a very long time ago, but it still didn’t sound quite right. He could not remember ever having seen a book which gave as a date the year nothing.

  ‘It can’t be right,’ he decided. ‘It must be eleven away from something else. I wonder what it is? Who could I ask to tell me?’