The Christmasaurus Read online

  Also by Tom Fletcher

  THERE'S A MONSTER IN YOUR BOOK

  THERE'S A DRAGON IN YOUR BOOK

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover and interior illustrations, text, and “I Ho, Ho, Hope It’s Santa” lyrics copyright © 2016 by Tom Fletcher

  Illustrations by Shane Devries

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover by Penguin Random House UK, London, in 2016.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeac​hersLibr​arians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Fletcher, Tom, author. | Devries, Shane, illustrator.

  Title: The Christmasaurus / Tom Fletcher ; illustrations by Shane Devries.

  Description: First American edition. | New York : Random House, [2018] | Originally published: London : Penguin Random House UK, 2016. | Summary: Ten-year-old William loves dinosaurs and when Santa delivers a real one, the two set out on a wild Christmas adventure, while the Hunter pursues them.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017053448 | ISBN 978-1-5247-7330-4 (trade) | ISBN 978-1-5247-7331-1 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-1-5247-7332-8 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Santa Claus—Fiction. | Christmas—Fiction. | Dinosaurs—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Fathers and sons—Fiction. | Humorous stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.F6358 Chr 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781524773328

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.3.2

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  For Buzz and Buddy.

  Merry Christmas, my little elves.

  Cover

  Also by Tom Fletcher

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  You are about to have an Adventure

  PROLOGUE— The End of the Dinosaurs

  1. William Trundle

  2. The Frozen Egg

  3. Santa’s Bottom

  4. Inside the Egg

  5. The Christmasaurus

  6. Magnificently Magical Flying Reindeer

  7. The Thing About William

  8. Wheely William

  9. Brenda the Revenger

  10. What William Wants

  11. Watching William

  12. A Stuffed Dinosaur

  13. The Night Before the Night Before Christmas

  14. A Secret Passenger!

  15. The Hunter

  16. The Rarest Creature on the Planet

  17. A Dinosaur in the House

  18. A Boy and a Dinosaur

  19. Bumping into Brenda

  20. Swapping Secrets

  21. The Hunt Begins

  22. Cracking the Code

  23. Ancient Ghosts

  24. Flight at the Museum

  25. The Candy Cane

  26. Santa Returns

  27. What William Really Wants

  28. The Christmasaurus Stays

  29. Smoke

  30. A Trundle Tornado

  31. Game Over

  32. Feathers

  33. The Wonderful Thing About Christmas

  Elves’ Songbook

  Tom’s Top 10 Things About Christmas!

  About Whizz-kidz

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  This story starts like all good stories do, a long time ago. Not just a long time ago, but a very, very, very long time ago. Squillions of years ago, in fact. Long before your granny and your granddad were born. Before there were any human beings at all. Before cars and airplanes, even before there was the internet, there was something even better….

  Dinosaurs were the most awesome creatures ever to walk the planet. There were lots of them, and they came in all shapes and sizes. There were small ones that were not much bigger than dogs or cats, some with spiky prickle horns on their backs. There were stupendously ginormous ones called Seismosaurus that were longer than five double-decker buses, with necks thicker than tree trunks and skin like the hard rubber tires of a tractor. I know that sounds hard to believe, but it’s definitely true, because this is a book, and books don’t lie.

  I’d like to tell you about two very special dinosaurs. We’ll call them Momosaurus and Dadlodocus. (Those weren’t their real names, of course—that would just be silly.)

  Momosaurus and Dadlodocus had been out all day in the hot, hot heat of the prehistoric sun and were returning home to their tidy little nest. But what they found in its place was something horrendously horrible: an almighty pile of rocks, bones, and dust. Their home had been raided by evil scavenger dinosaurs, and these sneaky, scroungy little scavengers had smashed it up completely!

  But for Momosaurus and Dadlodocus, the mess was the last thing on their minds, because they had left their most precious things alone inside the nest: twelve dinosaur eggs, which were now nowhere to be seen!

  As you can imagine, Momosaurus and Dadlodocus were devastated. They stood in the wreckage of their nest, weeping and roaring for a very long time, until the sun went down and the moon and stars filled the sky above the jungle.

  That night, a light breeze was blowing through the enormous trees, and a sliver of silvery moonlight found its way to the remains of the nest. Suddenly, something caught Dadlodocus’s eye. Something smooth and shiny was reflecting a moonbeam from under a pile of bones and mud. He quickly and gently lifted the rocks and rubble, and there it was, gleaming, perfectly unharmed in the moonlight.

  It was their one last EGG.

  How this one and only egg had escaped the hungry scavengers’ rampage was a mystery. Perhaps their greedy tummies were full up, or maybe this egg had rolled out of sight when they were smashing and crushing the others. Whatever the reason, all that mattered was that Momosaurus and Dadlodocus had one egg left. The tiny dinosaur that was curled up safely inside that egg became the most important thing in the world to them, and they weren’t going to let anything bad happen to it ever again!

  But something bad was about to happen—something that would change the world forever.

  The pearly moonlight that blanketed the dinosaurs’ broken nest suddenly seemed to turn yellow. Then the yellow turned orange and then to a hot, fiery red. Momosaurus and Dadlodocus peered out from their home, staring in disbelief. It was as though the moon itself was on fire!

  As they watched, the whole sky turned into a violent fireworks display of whizzing hot rocks and shooting stars—and not the kind of shooting stars that you and I know, which swoosh prettily over the sky like beautiful little scratches of light in space. These ones didn’t swoosh by at all. These ones smashed straight down like red-hot thunderbolts that exploded into thousands of fireballs as they hit the Earth!

  Panic and chaos consumed the jungle. Flaming trees were uprooted by huge, five-double-decker-bus-sized dinosaurs, and smaller dinosaurs were squished and trampled. The night sky was brighter than the lightest day, and the moon felt hotter than the midday sun—but there was only one thing on Momosaurus’s and Dadlodocus’s minds.<
br />
  Protecting their egg!

  They had to get their egg to safety!

  So they ran. They ran as fast as their dinosaur feet could carry them, desperately clinging to that last, treasured egg. They joined the stampede of thousands of terrified dinosaurs fleeing the danger, but no matter how fast and how far they ran, they couldn’t seem to escape. After all, how can you run from the sky?

  Momosaurus and Dadlodocus were swept into the crowd, pulled this way and pushed that way in a great sea of dinosaurs, and as hard as they tried, they just couldn’t hold on to their egg any longer!

  It slipped from their grip and fell to the ground.

  Now, I bet you’re thinking that the egg was crushed instantly, right? Well, smarty-pants, it wasn’t, actually!

  A pile of leaves broke the egg’s fall, and it rolled into the stampede, unharmed. It was kickerbashed and knockerboshed every which way—but it still didn’t crack! Momosaurus and Dadlodocus chased after it as it bounced between giant Diplodocus legs and rolled under stomping Stegosaurus feet, narrowly avoiding being squished time after time. It rolled and rolled, as if it had a mind of its own, falling from rocky ledges to treetops and swooshing down slushy mudslides, as Momosaurus and Dadlodocus desperately chased after it.

  If Momosaurus and Dadlodocus had been looking up at the sky instead of trying to find their egg, they would have seen such a terrifyingly, heart-stoppingly, frighteningly scary sight. The whole sky was on fire above them. What they had thought was the flaming moon was, in fact, a whopping, giganterrific planet smasher of a meteorite. It had traveled from the deepest depths of space and was about to smash-whack into planet Earth and wipe out all the dinosaurs forever!

  But just before the meteorite did its planet smashing, the lucky egg rolled all the way to the edge of a tall, jagged cliff, high above the ferocious ocean. All Momosaurus and Dadlodocus could do was watch helplessly as their last precious egg, with their tiny baby dinosaur inside, calmly toppled over the edge of the cliff and out of sight.

  Gone forever.

  The egg fell straight down, missing the rocky face of the cliff by inches. This was a very lucky egg indeed! It plopped peacefully into the ocean below, like a pebble in a lake, and instantly sank deep into the darkness, leaving the fiery chaos of the world above the waves. Eventually it came to rest on a soft, sheltered spot on the ocean floor as the meteor shower it left behind rained down unforgivingly, destroying every living dinosaur on the planet.

  Except one.

  The one inside the egg!

  While the egg lay peacefully at the bottom of the ocean, the world continued to burn—and then it froze solid, in an ice age that would last for thousands of years.

  There the egg remained, deep in the ice, frozen in time, just waiting to be discovered….

  This is William Trundle.

  There’s something you should know about William: William liked dinosaurs. Actually, he didn’t just like them. He loved them. In fact, he loved them so much I should probably write it in big letters like this:

  …sorry, William had dinosaur pajamas, dinosaur socks, dinosaur pants, a dinosaur-shaped toothbrush, dinosaur wallpaper, two dinosaur posters, a dinosaur lampshade, and more dinosaur toys than he could fit into a bag for life. But if there was one thing William knew for sure, it was that you could never have too many dinosaur toys!

  William lived in a wonky little house on the edge of a busy town on the edge of a busier city, but even though the house was small, it never really felt that way, because only two people lived in it: William and his dad, Bob Trundle.

  Now, I bet you’re wondering why William didn’t have a mom. Well, of course he did have a mom once, but sadly she died a long time ago, when William was very young. So it had been just William and Mr. Trundle for as long as William could remember.

  As well as dinosaurs, William loved Christmas—but not half as much as his dad did.

  Mr. Trundle loved Christmas so much that whenever Christmas Day was over, he would sob uncontrollably for a whole week, sometimes until the end of January, desperately clinging to Christmas! He even had a secret Christmas tree hidden in his closet. The tree was permanently decorated, and it lit up when he opened the door to get his clothes. Each morning as Mr. Trundle got dressed, he would look at his secret tree and say to himself, “Each day we move away from last Christmas is one day closer to the next.” It was these words that got him through the year.

  On this particular morning, though, Mr. Trundle was feeling very merry indeed—because it was the first day of December.

  “Time to get ready for school, Willypoos!” Mr. Trundle called from the kitchen as he spread butter on two steaming-hot crumpets (Mr. Trundle’s favorite breakfast).

  William rolled his eyes at the silly nickname his dad used for him—Willypoos!

  “Dad, you can’t keep calling me that. I’m seven and three-quarters. It’s embarrassing!” William shouted from his bedroom as he stuffed his schoolbag full of books.

  “I thought we’d agreed that I can call you Willypoos when you’re not at school? You can’t go changing the rules willy-nilly, Willypoos!” Mr. Trundle teased as he walked into his son’s bedroom. “Happy first of December!”

  Mr. Trundle beamed as he placed a breakfast tray down on William’s desk and nodded his head excitedly at a rectangular object perched perfectly next to the plate of golden crumpets. William followed his gaze and saw that it was a chocolate-filled Advent calendar.

  “Thanks, Dad! Where’s yours?” asked William. Every year, William and Mr. Trundle would each have an Advent calendar and open a new door together every morning before school. It was a Trundle tradition.

  William thought he saw a flicker of sadness on Mr. Trundle’s face, which was quickly replaced by a smile.

  “I thought it might be fun to share one this year, William,” Mr. Trundle said. Lately they’d been sharing a lot of things, as Mr. Trundle didn’t have very much money. But William didn’t mind.

  “Oh, OK!” he said. “I’ll open the door and you can have the first chocolate, Dad.”

  “How about I open the door and you have the first chocolate, William?” Mr. Trundle suggested.

  “Thanks, Dad,” William said, grinning. He’d secretly hoped his dad would say that.

  “Say ‘Cheese’!” said Mr. Trundle as he quickly snapped a photo of the two of them. “Ah, that’ll make a lovely Christmas card this year!” he said, admiring the photograph. It was another Trundle tradition to take a photograph on the first of December for the Christmas cards they would send to a long list of their distant relatives: Aunty Kim on the Isle of Wight; Great-Nana Joan, who looked like a witch; cousins Lilly and Joe; Aunty Julie; second cousin Sam; Uncle H. Trundle; Great-Grandpa Ken….It was a long list, half of whom William had never met!

  “William, have you thought about what you’re going to ask Santa for this year? You’ll need to write your letter soon,” said Mr. Trundle as he peeled open the first door on the Advent calendar. William took out the small snowman-shaped chocolate, but suddenly he didn’t feel like eating it.

  “My dear boy, what on earth’s the matter?” asked Mr. Trundle.

  “Well…it’s…it’s just that I don’t think Santa can bring me what I want this year,” said William, staring longingly at the dinosaur poster on his wall. “I’m pretty sure the elves can’t make real dinosaurs.”

  “Make?” repeated Mr. Trundle as he took a knowing sip of his cup of tea. “The elves don’t make anything at all!”

  William looked very confused. “But I thought Santa’s elves made all the presents at the North Pole,” he said.

  “Pah!” cried Mr. Trundle, spitting out a mouthful of tea. “Well, William, I’m afraid that’s all just a big pile of poppycock, fiddle-faddle, mouth-waffling, gibbery-faff nonsense. Whoever told you that is a complete knobblyplank! Make presents? Ha! Would you like me to
tell you how elves really work, William?” he asked, a sudden sparkle in his eyes.

  “Oh, please do, Dad!” William cried, and made himself comfortable. He always loved it when his dad told him stories. Mr. Trundle was very good at them—and he was particularly good at Christmas stories, for, as you already know, he loved everything about Christmas. He knew all there was to know about Santa, the elves, and the North Pole. Ever since he was a little boy himself, it had been his favorite time of year, and he would always be the first person to start celebrating Christmas. One year, he’d put up their Christmas tree in July (which had really annoyed the neighbors). William had loved it.

  “Well, the first thing you should know is that elf hands are far too small to build any decent sort of toy, and on top of that, they only have three fingers.”

  “Three fingers? No way!” William said, making funny shapes with his own hands, trying to imagine he had three elf fingers. “How small are elves, Dad?” he asked.

  “Very small, William. Looking at an elf is like looking at a human through a pair of binoculars, if you were holding them the wrong way around,” Mr. Trundle explained.

  “Oh, wow!” said William, who knew exactly what he meant.

  “No, the elves aren’t toy makers at all,” Mr. Trundle went on. “There are only two jobs that the North Pole elves are good at: farming and mining. Let me tell you how it works, my boy. First, Santa receives letters from girls and boys from all around the world, just like you, William, asking for all different sorts of Christmas presents. Santa then sits by his fireplace, in his rocking chair, and reads every letter aloud. Not in his head, William!”

  William nodded, listening intently.

  “This is very important, William, because in his letter-reading room there is a very old, very crooked, very magical Christmas tree. If you saw it, you would probably think it was a dead twig in a plant pot—but it is very important. It was the very first Christmas tree that ever lived, and it’s still alive—and now it sits and listens to Santa read.”