PUFFIN BOOKS
MR MAJEIKA AND THE
SCHOOL TRIP
Humphrey Carpenter (1946-2005), the author and creator of Mr Majeika, was born and educated in Oxford. He went to a school called the Dragon School where exciting things often happened and there were some very odd teachers – you could even call it magical! He became a full-time writer in 1975 and was the author of many award-winning biographies. As well as the Mr Majeika titles, his children’s books also included Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits and More Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits. He wrote plays for radio and theatre and founded the children’s drama group The Mushy Pea Theatre Company. He played the tuba, double bass, bass saxophone and keyboard.
Humphrey once said, “The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks. Words are the only tricks you need. I can write: ‘He floated up to the ceiling, and a baby rabbit came out of his pocket, grew wings, and flew away.’ And you will believe that it really happened! That’s magic, isn’t it?”
Books by Humphrey Carpenter
MR MAJEIKA
MR MAJEIKA AND THE DINNER LADY
MR MAJEIKA AND THE GHOST TRAIN
MR MAJEIKA AND THE HAUNTED HOTEL
MR MAJEIKA AND THE MUSIC TEACHER
MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL BOOK WEEK
MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL CARETAKER
MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL INSPECTOR
MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL PLAY
MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL TRIP
MR MAJEIKA ON THE INTERNET
MR MAJEIKA VANISHES
MR MAJEIKA AND THE LOST SPELL BOOK
THE PUFFIN BOOK OF CLASSIC
CHILDREN’S STORIES (Ed.)
SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT THE BORING BITS
MORE SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT THE
BORING BITS
Illustrated by Frank Rodgers
PUFFIN
With thanks to Eleanor Henderson, who asked for another Mr Majeika book, and to St Ebbe’s First School, Oxford, who were the first audience for it – and special thanks to the person who thought of the rubber duck
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,
Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
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New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland,
New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published 1999
23
Text copyright © Humphrey Carpenter, 1999
Illustrations copyright © Frank Rodgers, 1999
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN:978-0-14-193909-4
1. Who’s For Lunch?
2. St Barty’s For Sale
3. Just the Job
“I have an exciting announcement for Class Three,” said Mr Potter, the head teacher of St Barty’s School, at assembly one morning in April. “You’ll all be going off for three days to an outdoor activity centre to do all sorts of exciting things.”
“Hooray!” shouted almost everybody in Class Three, though they weren’t quite sure what an outdoor activity centre was, or what kind of exciting things Mr Potter meant.
The only person who didn’t cheer was the worst-behaved boy in Class Three, Hamish Bigmore. “Boo!” he said loudly.
“Now, Hamish,” said Mr Potter crossly, “don’t be so silly. There’s a big river at the outdoor activity centre, and you’ll be able to go swimming and canoeing and caving.”
“What’s caving, Mr Potter?” asked Jody, who was standing next to Hamish.
“It’s very exciting, Jody,” said Mr Potter. “You go into a hole in the ground and you follow an underground passage until you get into a cave.”
“That’s not exciting,” grumbled Hamish. “That’s boring. Who wants to go poking about in a smelly old cave?”
But everyone else in Class Three was very pleased. So was their teacher, Mr Majeika.
“It’ll be fun,” he said. “I used to live in a cave myself, when I was young and was still learning my spells.”
Class Three liked hearing about what Mr Majeika had done before he came to St Barty’s, because he hadn’t been a teacher then. He’d been a wizard.
“Was it a nice cave, Mr Majeika?” asked Thomas and Pete, the twins.
“Very nice,” said Mr Majeika. “The walls were covered in bright-green slime, and there was a family of bats living in the roof of the cave.”
“Yuck!” said Jody. “It sounds horrid. I don’t think I want to go into a cave if it’s going to be like that.”
“Class Four went to the outdoor activity centre last year,” said Pete. “There was a very narrow passage into one of the caves, and their teacher, Mr Hodgkiss, got stuck. It was ages before they could get him out.”
Hamish’s eyes brightened. “Ah,” he said. “I want to go caving after all. I can’t wait till Mr Majeika gets stuck” Hamish was the only person in Class Three who didn’t like Mr Majeika. This was because when Hamish was naughty Mr Majeika used spells to punish him.
