The Birthday Wars Read online

  ALSO BY KATE & JOL TEMPLE

  Yours Troolie, Alice Toolie (illustrated by Grace West)

  Letters from My Enemy

  Captain Jimmy Cook Discovers (illustrated by Jon Foye)

  Captain Jimmy Cook Discovers Third Grade

  Captain Jimmy Cook Discovers X Marks the Spot

  Parrot Carrot (illustrated by Jon Foye)

  Are You My Bottom? (illustrated by Ronojoy Ghosh)

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2019

  Copyright © Text, Kate Temple and Jol Temple 2019

  Copyright © Illustrations, Grace West 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76087 543 5

  eISBN 978 1 76087 175 8

  For teaching resources, explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover and internal design by Grace West

  Set by Grace West

  www.katejoltemple.com

  www.gracewest.com.au

  To Arlo, Clancy, Pip and Lottie, and all the funny boys and girls who inspire us - K&J

  To anybody who loves to draw - GW

  Contents

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Hi Alice (from Casper N)

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy (from Jenny)

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Cake Off! Jimmy

  Cake Off! Alice

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Good morning, Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Official Complaint: Dear Casper N

  Dear Alice (from Casper N)

  Dear Casper N

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Official Complaint: Dear Jenny Philpot

  Dear Alice (from Jenny)

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Attention All Students

  Dear Jimmy

  Good morning, Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Jimmy Cook (from Ms Fennel)

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Jimmy and Alice (from Ms Fennel)

  Dear Alice

  Dear Alice

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Invitation

  Dear Alice

  Good morning, Jimmy

  Dear Alice and Jimmy (from Casper N)

  Dear Alice

  Dear Alice and Jimmy (from Jenny)

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  Dear Alice

  Dear Jimmy

  More books about Alice and Jimmy

  About the authors and illustrator

  You are to a Woodland Princess Tea Party

  to celebrate the enchanted birthday of her Magical Highness, Alice Toolie!

  We will dance around the rainbow maypole and dine on edible glitter cakes.

  Come dressed as your favourite magical forest sprite!

  (just put a cute note in my locker telling me you’re comi
ng and also if you have any allergies to rainbows, glitter cakes or whatever)

  Yours troolie,

  Alice Toolie

  Dear Alice,

  This is my RSVP.

  Thank you for the invitation to your Woodland Princess birthday party. As you know, I am an expert on forests and wilderness survival. I even once saved my whole family from a vampire bear attack on a camping trip. At least, I think that’s what it was … but it might have just been my dad tripping over the tent ropes on his way to the toilet. I can tell you right now, whatever it was, it was pretty scary. Anyway, I would love to come to your forest party dressed as a giant ground sloth (which is a kind of megafauna), but I have something else on that day … and so do you!

  Yours marvellously,

  Captain Jimmy Cook

  The temperature has dropped to -62°C.

  Your fingers have turned to ice.

  The walls are rattling in a wild snow blizzard.

  You feel sick from eating real penguins.

  You are invited to Captain Jimmy Cook’s

  Antarctic Explorer Birthday Party.

  1 pm, Saturday 19th September

  Feast on frosty treats like iceberg-shaped ice-cream and cupcake husky dogs.

  Dear Jimmy,

  Your birthday party is on the SAME DAY and at the SAME TIME as my birthday party! You’ll need to move it. I’ve been planning my party for AGES and I’ve even booked this amazing entertainer who’s going to teach us all how to make crowns out of dried flowers and berries. It’s going to be awesome and, I’m sorry to say, MUCH BETTER than yours!

  Yours troolie,

  Alice Toolie

  Dear Alice,

  I have to admit, your party does sound 50% sort-of-good and 50% sort-of-not. I’m particularly interested in making a crown out of dried food. I would probably make mine out of dried meat because that would really come in handy for an Antarctic explorer—they were all starving! They were just eating any random thing they could get their hands on, so a meat hat would be TOTALLY useful. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m really into EVERYTHING to do with Antarctic and Arctic explorers at the moment.

  Yours frozenly,

  Captain Jimmy Cook

  Dear Jimmy,

  Yes, of course I’ve noticed that you’re obsessed with the South Pole! You’ve been wearing a giant fur coat to school for like a week. Aren’t you hot? (Your face is REALLY red.) Is it real fur? Because I’m pretty sure that’s illegal :(

  And by the way, can you please MOVE your party? Because I sent out my invitations first.

  Yours troolie,

  Alice Toolie

  Dear Alice,

  I am pretty hot, actually! I borrowed the coat from my gran, and she said it was wool and I think she’s right, because I do look like a woolly mammoth, which is pretty awesome. But back in the olden days, like before World War Two but after the dinosaurs, Antarctic explorers were totally wearing fur everything: fur hats, fur socks, fur underpants. I’m not joking. Fur undies! You can’t find fur underpants anywhere these days. I should know. I think you can buy fur trousers, but they just make you look a bit like you have goat legs, which would also be amazing.

  Also, regarding your request to move my party. Let me think … umm … NO. I’m not just being mean, but I actually can’t move it because that’s the day I was born and if I want to move it, I’ll have to 3D-print a time machine and then travel back in time and stop my parents from even meeting, which will probably mean I won’t ever be born, which means I won’t exist, so you are actually asking me to die!

  Yours crossly,

  Captain Jimmy Cook

  Dear Jimmy,

  That’s totally ridiculous. I’m not saying you should be born on a different day (although that would be really convenient!). I just think you should move your birthday party. I really can’t move mine because I’ve booked EVERYTHING and plus that’s the ONLY Saturday that I have available! I would have had it on my actual birthday, which is TWO WEEKS after yours, but my schedule is TOTALLY crazy! Every weekend I have ice skating, marching band, circus arts, beekeeping, archery, story club and science girls. If I don’t have the party on that date, I WON’T GET TO HAVE A PARTY AT ALL THIS YEAR! So PLEASE, can you move it???

  Yours troolie,

  Alice Toolie

  Dear Alice,

  You are not the only one with a busy schedule. I’ll have you know that every weekend I am flat out too. At the moment, I’m building an igloo for my party in my backyard. It’s really, really hard, mostly because my mum is totally against it. I can’t blame her, though, because when I first started, I was using these ice bricks I found in the freezer, but then they turned out to be some food my mum had frozen like spaghetti sauce and curries, so she wasn’t too happy when they all started melting. Anyway, now I have to make my own ice bricks and she only lets me do it one at a time, so it’s really slow-going.

  You know what? I’ve had an idea. Let’s just invite different people to our parties. You invite some to yours and I’ll invite the others to mine. PROBLEM SOLVED.

  Yours cooperatively,

  Captain Jimmy Cook

  Dear Jimmy,

  But I’m having a CLASS party! I’ve already invited everyone, and I mean EVERYONE! Even YOU! There’s literally nothing that can be done about it.

  Yours troolie,

  Alice Toolie

  Dear Alice,

  Let me tell you a little story.

  Once there was an elephant called Plimmy. He was a pretty cool elephant who was 162 years old and had X-ray vision and wore a captain’s hat (like me!).

  One day it was Plimmy’s birthday, so he invited all his friends to his party and made this awesome ice-cream cake with ham and lavender which sounds kind of gross but is really appealing to elephants.

  Anyway, he invited all his friends, including this sometimes-mean howler monkey mermaid called Balice Poolie. But Balice Poolie didn’t want everyone to go to Plimmy’s awesome party, even though everyone was super excited because Plimmy always has amazing parties, so Balice organised her own party on the same day and invited EVERYONE in the whole universe.

  But she forgot that that included dangerous three-headed aliens with laser eyes that destroy everything they look at and turn everyone into fire zombies. (They can’t even help it. They just look at something and ZAP, it’s instantly a fire zombie.)

  The only person who wasn’t at Balice’s party was Plimmy, because he was at his OWN party, eating lavender ham cake. So everyone in the whole universe (except Plimmy) got turned into fire zombies and Balice Poolie was totally to blame for destroying the entire universe.

  Yours authorly,

  Captain Jimmy Cook

  Thank you sooooo much for your Plimmy story. I want to be really supportive of your nutso story, but the truth is that it makes NO sense. I am not inviting any aliens or elephants (although I am totally thinking about hiring ponies!). I am just inviting ALL THE CLASS because I don’t like leaving people out, because I’m really nice. So you need to MOVE your party.

  Also, we need to sort this out NOW because heaps of people in our class are getting totally stressed :( Read this note I just got from Casper N!

  Yours troolie,

  Alice Toolie

  Hi Alice!

  Jumping Blue Beans! I just don’t know what to do! Jimmy’s party is on the same day as yours! Don’t tell Jimmy, but I really want to go to yours!!! Mostly because I heard you were having ponies and a cake pit (I don’t even know what a cake pit is, but it sounds like my kind of thing!!!). I hate how you both have parties on the same day because Jimmy is my second-best friend! Maybe I can tell him I have runny poo that day and secretly go to yours? Whatever you do, don’t tell him!

  Casper N

  Dear Alice,

  Thank you for revealing Casper N’s treachery. Now I will NEVER believe him when he uses the old ‘runny poo’ excuse. You know, in the olden days, like when there were convicts and sea monsters, if you
lied about having runny poo, they would make you say your eight times tables a million times and then fire you out of a cannon. I used to think that was a pretty harsh punishment, but maybe they were right. Just so you know, some people have actually chosen MY party. Jenny Philpot has already said she’s coming to MY party because she’s really into cold stuff. Look at the RSVP she just gave me.

  Yours confidently,

  Captain Jimmy Cook

  Dear Jimmy!

  I love cold stuff!

  I’m obsessed with eating snow and hail and sometimes I even put my pillowcase in the freezer. I would love to come to your frosty birthday party and eat icebergs and penguin cake.

  Jenny!

  Dear Jimmy,

  OMG! I can’t believe Jenny chose your party over mine! :o She’s just been like totally demoted from number 2 friend to number 5. Okay, this could get bad, so we need to sort this out really fast. It’s actually causing a lot of stress in the class and I don’t know if you know this, but stress is really bad for you :( I once heard of someone who got so stressed that his arms fell off.

  Yours troolie,

  Alice Toolie

  Dear Alice,

  I heard about that guy too. You’re right, stress is dangerous, almost as dangerous as poison dart frogs (I would LOVE one as a pet because they’re super cute, but they are also super deadly). This birthday clash is basically the biggest disaster that’s ever happened at school, and I mean even worse than that time the school lost electricity because a llama (or something!) got into the canteen and bit through a power cord and cut off the power and all the ice-cream melted and there was like a river of warm ice-cream oozing everywhere and then all the second-graders tried to use it as a slip ‘n’ slide and half the school had to get sent home because there weren’t enough clothes in lost property for everyone to change into. It’s WORSE than that. Big time.

  Yours disastrously,