Cirrus@Austlit

'A boy has teeth that glow in the dark. He has never lived with his mother. But one day, when he finds a letter mentioning where his mother might be, his friend tries to help him meet her for the first time.'

 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue-Tied_(short_story_collection))

'A boy who is obsessed with garden gnomes gets a gnome with a face in its mouth. After getting the face out of the gnome's mouth, the boy ends up getting the face in his own mouth, as well as an eye growing on his finger.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirky_Tails)

'A 95-year-old man enjoys cod-liver oil; his grandson does not. One day, while trying to breed a new species of apple in honour of his dead wife, his grandson comes over and is given his home-made muesli mixed with cod-liver oil in exchange for money for the movies. But since the grandson is unable to swallow it, the grandfather accompanies him to the movies. However, by leaving the oiled muesli in his mouth for too long, a plant grows on his face, which eventually produces the apple his grandfather wanted to invent.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undone_(short_story_collection))

'When a girl accidentally destroys a magnolia tree, she works as a busker to pay up for a new one. A young man (called Young Ponytail) gives her a mouth organ that, whenever a song is played on it, causes whoever hears it to act to the lyrics. Somehow, the mouth organ is stuck into the girl's mouth and the class blocks their ears and eventually run after the girl, while other people join the chase. Eventually all the people are turned into wood, and Young Ponytail gets the mouth organ out of the girl's mouth.'  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmentionable)

'A poor man makes a living by blowing up tree stumps and selling the wood chips as firewood. But when a whale washes ashore, dies, and causes problems for the town, this man is promised a lot of money if he can get rid of it.'   (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_(short_story_collection))

'When a boy goes fishing with his father, he finds a severed finger with a bear tattoo on it. This tattoo comes to life and directs the boy to its former owner, who is covered with tattoos; all of those tattoos then come to life and attach themselves to the boy.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_(short_story_collection))

'A boy finds a milk bottle with a pair of eyes inside. The trapped creature (who the boy calls snookle) is freed by the boy and becomes his servant - however, the boy soon discovers that his new servant helps him far too much, before giving the creature to an old woman who needs a lot of help.' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbelievable_(short_story_collection))

'When a boy gets a new calf, his father wants to get rid of it, but the boy likes it so much, so he doesn't want that to happen. He eventually gets a bottle that, when drunk from, allows him to read peoples' minds.

'This is the only Paul Jennings short story that is told from a second-person point of view. This is because the boy wants the reader to experience how he felt.'   (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undone_(short_story_collection))

'The only girl at a 16-student school gets teased often by all the boys, for the dual reasons of being the only girl and being the worst of all of them in athletic venues. However, when she brings her dead aunt's good-luck charm to school, she suddenly becomes better than them.'  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undone_(short_story_collection))

'A man has kept his 14-year-old daughter Linda locked up in his house for her entire life; he is the only person with whom she has interacted, and he has deliberately communicated with her in 'mixed-up English', using words in opposite contexts (e.g. interchanging the words 'yes' and 'no') to demonstrate a point about the way a person learns to speak. A young plumber visits and is horrified, and the father gives him permission to attempt to explain the experiment to Linda, convinced that she will not be able to comprehend what he is telling her; he tries several times, and as the story progresses she shows signs of beginning to understand what her father has done.

'At the climax of the story, the house burns down with Linda's father trapped inside. When the fireman asks Linda if anyone is inside the house, she tells him 'no'; but, her meaning is left ambiguous.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirky_Tails)

'A boy needs money because he wants to go on a date. When his father refuses, he spends the night to find a job so he can get the money. However, he meets an old man who tells him a story of how he worked as a busker when he was younger with his only friend, a little dog named Tiny. He becomes so desperate for friendship that when he wins the lotto and becomes rich, he tries giving the money to people so they will like him. Too late, he realizes that money can never buy true friendship, and that he never appreciated the only real friend he ever had.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbelievable_(short_story_collection))

'A man hangs out a different ice sculpture at the front of his fish shop every month. But when he makes a maiden sculpture that is a copy of his cousin, one of his friends wants to keep that one. The boy, who is the protagonist, ends up holding the sculpture and kissing it. As his flesh is stuck to the ice sculpture, he tries to scream out words to other people but all he gets are laughs because of his nasal noises. He eventually runs into water and the ice sculpture melts, and the boy is near drowning. However, his hair has actually saved his life because the man saw it floating in the water! The boy wakes up and sees both the man and his cousin looking down at him only to see what the ice sculpture was based on, the fish man's cousin. Was later adapted as an episode of Round The Twist.'  ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmentionable)

'A boy goes to school wearing a bird cage on his head. He explains to his teacher that it is a self-imposed punishment because he blames himself for the murder of his girlfriend's budgerigar, only to find out that the budgerigar had already died before the boy's dog played around with it. The only short story from this book not to be adapted into an episode of Round the Twist'   (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbearable_(short_story_collection))

'An old man makes a living by collecting dead animals and freezing them in his ice factory. A brutal man keeps a cow locked in his home, and another boy tries to get it back to the countryside.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_(short_story_collection))

'On the way to a sports game, some boys run over a dog; they try to get the dog replaced before its owners find out. But later they find out the dogs owner keeps throwing stuffed dogs in front of cars, and guilts the man to buy another dog. WORTH $1000' 

'While sick in bed, a boy is asked to play a game of Spot the Dog by his mother, whose pictures of landmarks in their home town are very detailed, but lack people. While looking over the picture, the boy seems to end up sucked into the game, because 1) he ends up looking for dogs around town personally; 2) the town seems to be deserted during his search, just like it is in his mother's pictures; and 3) whenever he finds the dogs, they run away faster than normal to their new location. The last page of the story contains a distorted picture of the town, and a chance for the reader to play Spot the Dog.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue-Tied_(short_story_collection))

'A boy stays at his aunt and uncle's house; his uncle has started acting like a mouse, so is locked in the basement. His aunt explains that the uncle had previously invented a machine that acts as a mousetrap, but instead of killing the mouse, it causes it to run away. Similarly, a mouse that has been hiding in the boy's room acts like a person; the boy later finds out that if two animals touch the machine at the same time, their brains swap. By Paul Jennings'  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_(short_story_collection))

'As punishment for allowing his mouse to breed, a boy has his head-lopper confiscated, which upsets him because he was planning to use it in an upcoming act. But he later discovers a strange species of insect that appear to be born from hailstones and have an unusual mating dance. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue-Tied_(short_story_collection))

'A conniving salesman named Giffen sells a glue that will stick to anything, but stops working after four hours. After getting many innocent townspeople to buy it, he leaves town in his truck before they can track him down for cheating them, then meets a man who has invented a box that can make people fly into the sky. Attempting to try it for himself leads to the biggest mistake of his life.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_(short_story_collection)

'A boy gets his nose stretched in an accident and is sent to his grandfather's house in the country to take his mind off it. However, his grandfather is embroiled in a decades-long feud with another old man, as they are able to transfer illnesses to each other by blowing into magic gumleaves. Later a bushfire burns the tree which had the magic leaves on it. The boy blows the last leaf and his stretched nose is gone. This was later adapted as an episode of Round The Twist. In Round The Twist a girl stretches her nose when being scared by her brothers - she falls down the tree and later she goes to the hospital and they say they can't fix her nose for three years. She doesn't want to go back to school so she goes to her grandmother's house for some time. Her grandmother is embroiled in a decades-long feud with another old man, (Foxy). There happened to be a bad bushfire that year and the grandmother helped Foxy. Later they talk about a gum tree and then they yell "THE GUM TREE!" when they arrive at the GUM TREE there is only one leaf left and the girl gets it and Foxy and the girl's grandmother and yelling "give it here!" So she runs and plays the song Click Go the Shears, and passes the stretched nose to her parents who were there at the time and then she lost her stretched nose and her brothers and father had stretched noses. The reason why Foxy and her grandmother didn't get the injury was because they had ear plugs in. After she leaves on the train she hears the park ranger say that gum leaf trees grow back. She screams and wakes up in the hospital she asks her parents to take off their masks. They do as told and their noses are the same and then before it ends there is a GUM LEAF in her hand.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbelievable_(short_story_collection))