Autobiogarphy of a Book

by Sadaf Tausif

EMS High School, Islamabad

Hi kids !Would you like to hear my story? Mind you, it is a very sad tale! I am a book that was written by J.K. Rowling, you know the famous author who created the famous Harry Potter series and became a billionaire.

My name is ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.’ I am a really exciting book about wizards and witches, magic and spells, and of course He Who Must Not Be Named. After J.K. Rowling wrote me, I was sent to Bloomsbury Publishers. Editors there read me, loved me and I was sent for publication.

I was shipped to Liberty Books along with lots of other copies. I was a hardcover edition with a glistening cover and beautiful illustrations. There I stood on the shelf, gleaming under the spotlights waiting, for a book lover to come and buy me.

One day, a very rude, boisterous boy visited the bookshop and that, my friends, was the end of my good days. He flipped through my pages with dirty, gummy fingers and ripped few of my pages. I was horrified at his callous attitude. The shop keeper forced the boy’s mother to buy me because who would buy a torn book?

As soon as I got to my new home, I was put aside carelessly. To my horror, a toddler crawled towards me, attracted by my red, shiny cover. Worse still, she was holding a sippy cup, half full of orange juice. First, she clutched me with wet fingers, and then she drooled all over me. To make matters worse, she spilled some juice on me, making me all wet and soggy. She even tried to chew a corner of my cover till her mother rescued me.

To my relief, I was left alone for some time until WHIZZ! OUCH! Someone roller skated over me. I whimpered. It was that wretched boy again who zigzagged around me without a care in the world.

At bedtime, he decided to read me…while eating a chocolate cake. Now I was done for. He read a few pages, and used his fat, pudgy finger to wipe chocolate cream off my pages. He got bored after reading just a few pages (imagine that) and flung me across the room. To my utter dismay, I landed in the laundry basket overflowing with his dirty, smelly clothes.

Next morning, the maid carried me off to somewhere. I couldn’t see anything because I was smothered by clothes. She tipped the whole basket over and I was in the washing machine, I was whirled and got tumbled about for an eternity. When my master’s mother saw my tattered remains, she fished me out of soapy water and threw me aside in disgust. A crow sat on me and well…I never smelt the same again.

After I dried out, I was put alongside old newspapers and other books that seem to have gone through the same torture as myself. Clearly this was a household that had no love for books…not that I can be called a book any longer. In just under two days, I had been torn, ripped, drooled on, smeared with cake, flung about mercilessly and washed in a washing machine. Now I will be sold with old rubbish and maybe recycled.

And now I end my sad, little story with a request. If you don’t like books, don’t go to bookshops. If your mom buys you a book anyway, gift us to those people who like us….and don’t eat chocolate cakes while reading us. Thank you very much!

(Published in Dawn/Young World)

Ah…these elders!

by Bakhtawar Ahmed | Siddique Public School, RWP

In the times when I was new
When even the elders knew not much
A raconteur told me what he knew
About a naughty, nasty girl
A tiny little shrimp named Sue

One day her parents left to buy
Some grocery from the grocery store
Alas! the two knew not what terror
In their house might be in store
On learning the dangerous bomb all alone on the house!

A seed of mischief began to grow
In Sue’s wriggly, jiggly mind,
She crept to the kitchen to steal some flour,
Out of the kitchen shelf.

Like as a tiger moves towards its target,
So did little Sue creep towards her prey,
But the moment she opened the wretched kitchen’s door,
Lo and Behold!
A dirty, grisly beastly python
She saw on the floor!

“Heavens!” she shrieked. “Great heavens!” she cried,
“Never such a dirty thing have I seen in my life!”
She banged the door shut
And with a reversed role.
She now ran like a hare
Followed by a hound,
With bristly hair and tight shut eyes.

After half an hour came the much awaited time,
When the dangerous bells went dime-dime-dime,
Little Sue sprinted to the door,
And opening it, stood, like
An innocent in the court.

“Ho-ho!” the father said, “I smell something wrong!”
“Cripes!” the mother said, “I smell the truth,
The truth which is burning in the culprit’s mind,
Like Bob’s sandwiches I burn every time,
I put in the oven to cook!”

“But mom,” she said, “my conscience is clear,
My nose is clean and hands aren’t red.”
“Let’s see,” said father, “if you are a liar!”

They started scrutinizing the house’s each floor,
But nothing was found wrong in the kitchen,
Nor in the bedroom, nor in the restroom.
The dejected parents thought
They were wrong after all!

“Bob!” said mother, “I’ll burn you a toast,”
“And heavens!” she said, “stop picking your nose!”
“But mother,” said Sue, “Oh mother!” she cried.
“Please don’t proceed a bit ahead,
Because doing so can cost you your life!”

“There!” said father, “we were wrong as I said!”
“The little squirt probably had some plan up her head.”
“Daddy,” said Sue, “Oh daddy!” she cried.
Today I saw on the kitchen’s floor,
A big disgusting snake as big as a door!”

“I ‘will’ go and open the door,
And see where’s the snake on the floor.”
So the foolish father welcomed his doom
Inside the kitchen he went,
And soon his shrieks did rent,
The air of that noisy town.

To the hospital, in his agony, he was rushed,
Where he was given painful treatments and injected anti-venous
And on returning home, he announced to his bewildered wife,
“Never again in my life,
Will I ignore even some
NASTY LITTLE GIRL!”