“Now let me see,” he thought, as he took his last lick of the inside of the jar, “where was I going, Ah, yes, Eeyore.” He got up slowly. And then, suddenly, he remembered. He had eaten Eeyore’s present!
“Today I’m five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I’m changed to five, abracadabra. Before that I was three, then two, then one, then zero. ‘Was I minus numbers?‘”
“The family section ran a regular feature about kids on their birthdays, and my mother had called in some info. The last sentence read: ‘As a hobby, Leo Borlock collects porcupine neckties.‘”
When J.J.’s mother idly wishes for more time for her birthday, J.J. decides to find her some. But how can he find her time when he barely has enough time of his own to do the basics, like schoolwork—let alone to find out if the local rumors about his grandfather being a murderer are true?
“It all happened on Findus’ birthday. Findus had three birthdays a year, because it was more fun that way. And every birthday, Pettson made him a pile of pancakes.”
“This birthday Pettson went to the hen house to collect a basket of eggs. Then he sat on the bench outside the kitchen and polished them. Pettson was a tidy man and he wanted them all clean and shiny.”
“The night before her birthday, Hannah went to bed tingling with excitement – she had asked her father for a gorilla! In the middle of the night, Hannah woke up and saw a very small parcel at the foot of the bed. It was a gorilla but it was just a toy.”
“Hannah rushed downstairs to tell her father what had happened. ‘Happy birthday, love,’ he said. ‘Do you want to go to the zoo?’ Hannah looked at him. She was very happy.”
“When Pat arrived at the twins’ birthday party, with Sarah-Ann and the chocolates, Katy smiled properly for the first time that day. She hugged Sarah-Ann and Pat and Jess, and said, ‘Thank you’ to them all. It was a lovely party.”
“ ‘Poor Katy,’ said Pat, ‘and on her birthday, too. I’ll buy her a box of chocolates to cheer her up, as we haven’t found Sarah-Ann’. Pat took a box of chocolates from the shelf of the mobile shop.”
“From that time onwards, Hush was visible. But once a year, on her birthday, she and Grandma Poss ate a Vegemite sandwich, a piece of pavlova and half a lamington, just to make sure that Hush stayed visible forever. And she did.”
“Betsy Bear wrote a letter to Grandma to wish her a Happy Birthday. She went to the post office to mail it. She bought an airmail stamp and stuck it on the envelope. She put the letter in the letter slot. ”
It’s Gwyn Griffiths’ birthday, but celebrations are frowned on, as it is also the anniversary of his sister’s disappearance on the mountains above his house.
″‘And three parcels. The big one’s my cake and the square fat one’s probably Aunt Angela.’
Darbishire peered at the parcel, through dusty spectacles. ‘Don’t be crazy; she couldn’t be that shape unless she’d been cremated.‘”