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  About the Author

  Duncan Ball is an Australian author and scriptwriter, best known for his popular books for children. Among his most-loved works are the Selby books of stories plus the collections Selby’s Selection, Selby’s Joke Book and Selby’s Sidesplitting Joke Book. Some of these books have also been published in New Zealand, Germany, Japan and the USA, and have won countless awards, most of which were voted by the children themselves.

  Among Duncan’s other books are the Emily Eyefinger series about the adventures of a girl who was born with an eye on the end of her finger, and the comedy novels Piggott Place and Piggotts in Peril, about the frustrations of twelve-year-old Bert Piggott forever struggling to get his family of ratbags and dreamers out of the trouble they are constantly getting themselves into.

  Duncan lives in Sydney with his wife, Jill, and their cat, Jasper. Jasper often keeps Duncan company while he’s writing and has been known to help by walking on the keyboard. Once, returning to his work, Duncan found the following word had mysteriously appeared on screen: ikantawq ……….

  By the Same Author

  Emily Eyefinger

  Emily Eyefinger, Secret Agent

  Emily Eyefinger and the Lost Treasure

  Emily Eyefinger and the Black Volcano

  Emily Eyefinger’s Alien Adventure

  Emily Eyefinger and the Devil Bones

  Emily Eyefinger and the Balloon Bandits

  Emily Eyefinger and the Ghost Ship

  Piggott Place

  Piggotts in Peril

  Selby’s Secret

  Selby Speaks

  Selby Screams

  Selby Supersnoop

  Selby Spacedog

  Selby Snowbound

  Selby Surfs

  Selby Snaps!

  Selby’s Joke Book

  Selby Splits

  Selby’s Selection

  Selby’s Stardom

  Selby’s Side-splitting Joke Book

  Selby Sorcerer

  Author’s Note

  Sometimes I don’t hear from Selby for ages and I begin to worry about him. He’s had so many scrapes with death that I can’t help thinking, maybe something terrible has happened to him. Maybe I’ll never hear from him again and I won’t even know why.

  Anyway, before I’ve worried too much I usually get a phone call telling me about some new adventures he’s had. That’s what happened recently and these are the stories in this book.

  He told me the funniest story about Mrs Trifle posing in the nude for some art students, and an exciting (and scary) one about driving a race car, one about a bank-robbing granny, and one about those awful kids Willy and Billy chasing Selby into a sausage-making machine. And there were other stories. But it was a different phone call from Selby that really set my heart racing.

  ‘I need your help,’ he said. ‘I’m in Hollywood and I have to write a movie script — fast!’ That was the beginning of Selby’s rise to stardom in a mega-blockbuster movie. I won’t ruin it for you by telling you what happened. You’ll have to read it for yourself.

  Copyright

  Angus & Robertson

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia

  First published in Australia in 2002

  This edition published in 2011

  by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

  ABN 36 009 913 517

  A member of the HarperCollinsPublishers (Australia) Pty Limited Group

  www.harpercollins.com.au

  Text copyright © Duncan Ball 2002

  Illustration copyright © Allan Stomann 2002

  The right of Duncan Ball to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  25 Ryde Road, Pymble, Sydney, NSW 2073, Australia

  31 View Road, Glenfield, Auckland 0627, New Zealand

  A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India

  77–85 Fulham Palace Road, London, W6 8JB, United Kingdom

  2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada

  10 East 53rd Street, New York NY 10022, USA

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Ball, Duncan 1941—

  Selby’s Stardom/ Duncan Ball.

  ISBN: 978-0-2072-0021-1 (pbk)

  ISBN: 978-0-7304-9520-8 (ePub)

  1. Dogs — Juvenile fiction. I. Stomann, Allan. II. Title

  A823.3

  Cover design by Christa Edmonds

  Cover illustration by Allan Stomann