Selby Shattered (12 page)

Of all the people involved in the making of this book, the author would particularly like to thank Jill Quin, Shona Martyn, Lisa Berryman, Jo Butler, Cristina Cappelluto and Barbara Mobbs.

Selby, the only talking dog in Australia and, perhaps, the world, is in a bit of a mess. So much of a mess, in fact, that you might call it a shemozzle!

Selby’s shemozzle starts when he tells a joke that’s so funny, he puts the whole town of Bogusville in the hospital. And he doesn’t stop there …

Between being coated in chocolate and almost eaten by those horrible brats, Willy and Billy, falling in love with the world’s first talking cat, pretending to be a seeing-eye dog and maybe — just maybe — changing the recipe of Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits, Selby is in a right shemozzle. But the biggest shemozzle of all is when he becomes invisible.

How does he get himself out of it?

Prepare to laugh yourself silly as you find out!

Duncan Ball is an Australian author and scriptwriter, who writes popular books for children. This book,
Selby Shattered,
is the fourteenth story collection about Selby, ‘the only talking dog in Australia and, perhaps, the world'. There is also a collection of Selby stories taken from the other books called
Selby’s Selection,
and two jokes books:
Selby’s Joke Book
and
Selby’s Side-Splitting Joke Book.

Duncan has also written the Emily Eyefinger books, a 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 a twelve-year-old boy, Bert Piggott, in a never- ending struggle to get his family of ratbags and dreamers out of trouble.

Duncan lives in Sydney with his wife, Jill, and their cat, Jasper. Duncan wanted to see if the Selby stories would be good bedtime stories so he read one to Jasper and, sure enough, Jasper slept right through it.

For more information about Duncan and his books, see Selby’s site at:

www.harpercollins.com.au/selby

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
Emily Eyefinger and the Puzzle in the Jungle
Emily Eyefinger and the City in the Sky
Piggott Place
Piggotts in Peril
The Case of the Graveyard Ghost and Other Mysteries
The Case of the Vampire’s Wire and Other Mysteries

Angus&Robertson
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia

First published in Australia in 2006
This edition published in 2011
by HarperCollins
Publishers
Australia Pty Limited

ABN 36 009 913 517

Copyright © Duncan Ball 2006
Illustrations copyright © Allan Stomann 2006

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.

HarperCollins
Publishers
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10 East 53rd Street, New York NY 10022, USA

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Ball, Duncan, 1941—.

Selby Shattered / Duncan Ball.

ISBN: 978-0-2072-0066-3 (pbk.)

ISBN: 978-0-7304-9514-7 (ePub)

For children aged 8–12 years.

1. Dogs — Juvenile fiction. I. Stomann, Allan. II. Title
A823.3

Cover concept by Christa Moffitt, Christabella Designs
Cover design by Matt Stanton
Cover and internal illustrations by Allan Stomann