Dick King-Smith

His mother was amazed when she saw the size of her newborn infant and realized that feeding him was going to cause problems. She turned to a box of patent Porker Pills, used for fattening pigs. But the bigger Magnus grew, the more problems he caused.

Abigail would love to have a pet parrot, but they're too expensive. So she decides to teach one of her father's chickens to talk instead. To the amazement of Abigail's family, she succeeds. Soon, they have to stop Polly being quite so chatty.

The dodos are leading idyllic lives on an island in the Indian Ocean. The date was AD 1650 and soon there would be no dodos anywhere at all on earth. Beatrice and Bertie are happily planning their wedding bliss and thinking of all the dodolings they would produce, unaware of the dangers lurking offshore in the anchored ship.

Harmony Parker thought animals much nicer than people, and saw everyone she knew as some non-human species. Her father, for example, was most definitely a bald-headed Sea Lion, her mother a tubby, fussy Pouter Pigeon, and her tiresome older sister a Siamese cat.