Story 1 - Full of feelings

Picture 1

Full of feelings

This is a story about three friends. Leela and Tig are sister and brother. Their best friend is Sandy. They live in a small town by a big river. They all like each other a lot.

Tig and Leela are twins, which means that they were born on the very same day and they have the same mum and dad. Leela was born before Tig so she says that she’s older than him. But as she’s only one hour older, Tig thinks that’s silly and they sometimes have arguments about it.

Picture 2

Leela and Tig live with their mum and dad in a house on the edge of the town. Sandy lives next door with her mum and her older brother called Finn. She only sees her dad sometimes because he lives in another town, which takes a long time to get to on the bus.

Ever since they were babies, they’ve always played together. Tig and Leela’s mum used to look after Sandy in the daytime while her mum was out at work. Now at weekends, Sandy’s mum or Tig and Leela’s dad sometimes takes them all out to the swimming pool or the cinema. Sometimes when Sandy’s dad is visiting, everyone goes to the park and plays games.

Picture 3

Tig, Sandy and Leela are all in the same class at school. In fact they all started going to school together on the very same day. On that day, their very first day at infant school, Mr Johnson, their new teacher, had made a badge for everyone to wear which had their name written on it.

When everyone was sitting in a circle, they all took it in turns to say their name and something interesting about themselves.

Picture 4

When it was Tig’s turn, he said, “My name is Tig and I’ve got a stick insect called Zippy and he lives in a tank in my room.”

Leela was feeling very nervous, but she said, “My name is Leela and my brother Tig is always putting Zippy on my pillow and I don’t like it when he does that.”

Then Mr Johnson said to the class, “Leela and Tig were born on the same day so that means they are twins.”

“Yes,” said Leela, “but we don’t always like the same things like some twins do.”

“Do you like being twins?” asked Mr Johnson.

Leela and Tig looked at each other. They had never really thought about that before.

“Well, sometimes it’s all right,” said Tig. “You’ve always got somebody to play with.”

Picture 5

Leela was thinking something quite different. She was remembering last summer when Tig had been ill in bed and their mum was looking after him all the time. Then she’d felt jealous that Tig was getting all the attention.

It was Sandy’s turn next. “My name is Sandy and I live next door to Tig and Leela and I have a big brother called Finn.”

“Thank you, Sandy,” said Mr Johnson.

Picture 6

“I think everyone has had a turn, haven’t they? Now, when you
go home this afternoon, I want you to look for something that you like a lot and, if you can, bring it to school with you tomorrow. No pets, though – we can’t really have our classroom full of dogs and cats, can we?”

Tig was thinking about his stick insect. He loved Zippy very much and he  felt angry that Mr Johnson would not allow pets in the classroom.

“I wanted to show Zippy to my friends,” he thought. “That’s not fair. Besides, it would be fun if we could bring our cats and dogs and things to school. Mr Johnson is just a spoil-sport.” [pause]

Picture 7

As they walked home from school, Leela could tell that Tig had something on his mind. His face looked strange and he wasn’t his usual cheerful self, laughing and joking all the time.

“What’s the matter, Tig?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” he said.

But Leela knew that something was wrong. What should she do? If she asked him again when they got home, he might tell her or he might get cross and tell her to go away and she didn’t want that to happen.

When Tig and Leela’s dad came home from work, they all had tea together. Their dad asked them how their first day at school had gone.

“It was great,” said Leela. “We sang songs and I knew the words to lots of them.”

“What about you, Tig?” said Dad. “Did you do anything good?”

“Not really,” said Tig. He had decided that school was horrible and he didn’t want to go any more. After tea, he went upstairs to his room and lay down on the bed.

Picture 8

“Why can’t you come to school with me, Zippy?” he said out loud. But Zippy the stick insect was asleep on a tree branch in his tank.