She was skinny but fast, and more than ready to fight anyone who called Bert ‘Butterball’.ĭaisy’s father, Dan Dovetail, was the king’s carpenter, repairing and replacing the wheels and shafts on his carriages. Daisy was Bert’s defender against bullies. The two children had been born days apart, and acted more like brother and sister than playmates.

Due to Bertha’s habit of bringing home fancy cakes that hadn’t turned out absolutely perfectly, Bert was a plump little boy, and sometimes, I regret to say, the other children called him ‘Butterball’ and made him cry.īert’s best friend was Daisy Dovetail.

The king liked Major Beamish, and he also liked Bert’s mother, because Bertha Beamish was the king’s own private pastry chef, a high honour in that city of world-class bakers. A handsome, cheerful man who rode a steel-grey horse, he accompanied King Fred, Lord Spittleworth, and Lord Flapoon on their hunting trips, which usually happened five times a week. Major Beamish, Bert’s father, was head of the Royal Guard. By night, the sturdy gates were closed, and everyone in the City-Within-The-City slept, like the king, under the protection of the Royal Guard. The City-Within-The-City was separated from the rest of Chouxville by a high white wall, and the gates in the wall stood open during the day, so that the residents could visit friends and family in the rest of Chouxville, and go to the markets. Gardeners, cooks, tailors, pageboys, seamstresses, stonemasons, grooms, carpenters, footmen, and maids: all of them occupied neat little cottages just outside the palace grounds. This was the part of Chouxville where all the people who worked for King Fred had houses. The Beamish and Dovetail families both lived in a place called the City-Within-The-City. We won’t keep you any longer… chapters 3-8 are below! 3. If you need to catch up, click to link to read chapters one and two. Remember to post your children’s artwork on Twitter with the hashtag #TheIckabog for a chance for their artwork to be featured in the published book coming in November. We’ve loved reading it so much that we’ve started re-reading Harry Potter! Rowling has just released 5 more chapters of her new children’s fairytale The Ickabog! She’ll be releasing a new installment every weekday through July, and we’re already counting down the hours until tomorrow.

The seamstress grim dawn