(Sorry if it sometimes took ages to write back to you.)
About the Author
Duncan Ball is an Australian author and scriptwriter, best known for his popular books for children. Among his most-loved works are the Selby books of stories plus the collections Selby’s Selection, Selby’s Joke Book and Selby’s Sidesplitting Joke Book. Some of these books have also been published in New Zealand, Germany, Japan and the USA, and have won countless awards, most of which were voted by the children themselves.
Among Duncan’s other books are the Emily Eyefinger series about the adventures of a girl who was born with an eye on the end of her finger, and the comedy novels Piggott Place and Piggotts in Peril, about the frustrations of twelve-year-old Bert Piggott forever struggling to get his family of ratbags and dreamers out of the trouble they are constantly getting themselves into.
Duncan lives in Sydney with his wife, Jill, and their cat, Jasper. Jasper often keeps Duncan company while he’s writing and has been known to help by walking on the keyboard. Once, returning to his work, Duncan found the following word had mysteriously appeared on screen: ikantawq ……….
By the Same Author
Emily Eyefinger
Emily Eyefinger, Secret Agent
Emily Eyefinger and the Lost Treasure
Emily Eyefinger and the Black Volcano
Emily Eyefinger’s Alien Adventure
Emily Eyefinger and the Devil Bones
Emily Eyefinger and the Balloon Bandits
Emily Eyefinger and the Ghost Ship
Piggott Place
Piggotts in Peril
Selby’s Secret
Selby Speaks
Selby Screams
Selby Supersnoop
Selby Spacedog
Selby Snowbound
Selby Surfs
Selby Snaps!
Selby’s Joke Book
Selby Splits
Selby’s Selection
Selby’s Stardom
Selby’s Side-splitting Joke Book
Selby Sorcerer
Author’s Note
Sometimes I don’t hear from Selby for ages and I begin to worry about him. He’s had so many scrapes with death that I can’t help thinking, maybe something terrible has happened to him. Maybe I’ll never hear from him again and I won’t even know why.
Anyway, before I’ve worried too much I usually get a phone call telling me about some new adventures he’s had. That’s what happened recently and these are the stories in this book.
He told me the funniest story about Mrs Trifle posing in the nude for some art students, and an exciting (and scary) one about driving a race car, one about a bank-robbing granny, and one about those awful kids Willy and Billy chasing Selby into a sausage-making machine. And there were other stories. But it was a different phone call from Selby that really set my heart racing.
‘I need your help,’ he said. ‘I’m in Hollywood and I have to write a movie script — fast!’ That was the beginning of Selby’s rise to stardom in a mega-blockbuster movie. I won’t ruin it for you by telling you what happened. You’ll have to read it for yourself.
Copyright
Angus & Robertson
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia
First published in Australia in 2002
This edition published in 2011
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
A member of the HarperCollinsPublishers (Australia) Pty Limited Group
www.harpercollins.com.au
Text copyright © Duncan Ball 2002
Illustration copyright © Allan Stomann 2002
The right of Duncan Ball to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Ball, Duncan 1941—
Selby’s Stardom/ Duncan Ball.
ISBN: 978-0-2072-0021-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-7304-9520-8 (ePub)
1. Dogs — Juvenile fiction. I. Stomann, Allan. II. Title
A823.3
Cover design by Christa Edmonds
Cover illustration by Allan Stomann