The Crazy Cruise This publication is based on creative activities carried out in the fifth grade class at the Àngel Baixeras school.
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even-year-old Pippi Delpino and her parents, Dybala and Johanna, arrive at the port of Barcelona
as the sun sets, ready to take a cruise to the Caribbean! It is a beautiful evening, the stars are bright and the moonlight is shining in a pink sky over the Vela Hotel as the sun goes down. The Delpinos are a fashionable family: Mr. Delpino is wearing a suit with a T-shirt underneath. Pippi is wearing a dark green cape and jean shorts, and Johanna is wearing a pink dress with wide sleeves. They put their suitcases down on the dock and look around. Strangely, no one is in line to get on the boat except for them. They can see some shark fins peeking up over the railing of the deck. Her parents are scared to get on the ship, but Pippi doesn’t mind that they will be the only passengers.
3 Dybala grabs his suitcase tightly: it is full of euro bills. Pippi leads the way up the gangway. The engine stars up, and steam blows out of the chimneys at the top of the ship. They are ready to go.
4 A small robot with a lightbulb on his head is waiting for them at the top of the gangway. “Welcome to the Titanic!” He says cheerfully. “My name is James. James Bond.” Then he makes a noise, and it sounds like a whole chorus of people clicking their tongue: “Click click, click click, click click,” the Delpinos hear. James reaches out to grab the suitcases. “I’ll take these for you,” he says. “I’m the purser. My job is to help the passengers.” Pippi’s parents look around nervously as James wheels away with their bags. Dybala watches his suitcase disappear, and with it the euros inside that were made in the money factory that he owns. When they arrived on the deck they see that the whole boat is made of metal. The
5 moonlight reflects on the deck. “Oh, it’s so shiny!”Dybala and Johanna both say at the same time. “Wowwwwww!” Shouts Pippi. Robot James Bond offers them moonglasses so that they can see. The parents sit down on the deck chairs to look at the view of Barcelona. They hear the motor of the ship start up and the sound of tongues clicking: “click click, click click, click click.” As the boat heads into the ocean, they can see the whole skyline of the city. Pippi sees the port of Barcelona getting smaller as the boat moves away. She also sees the fins of six black sharks who are swimming behind the cruise ship. The Delpinos have not yet noticed the captain of the boat.
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8 The Delpinos follow James onto the deck of the ship. They pass the wheel house, the room at the top of the boat where the captain stands and steers. They see a mechanical hand on the wheel of the boat, and attached to it, there is a witch who has two heads! One has blue hair and one has black hair. One side of her is wearing a long rainbow dress. The other side has on a black dress with green stars that is ripped at the hem. She is a cyborg witch, and her name is Weeborg Cytch. She came from the moon, and travelled through outer space in a spaceship that crashed into the ocean and turned into this boat. In the boat, Weeborg Cytch traveled from China to New York. Now she will go from Barcelona to the Caribbean, with the Delpinos on board. Next to her, she keeps a big metal bowl that she uses to communicate with other aliens.
9 When she is feeling good, she is very nice and the sea is calm. When she is feeling upset, the sky gets very dark, and there is a big storm and huge waves. When the Delpino family walks to their cabin, Pippi sees a picture on the floor. She takes it and hides it under her cape. Onces they are alone in the room. Pippi shows it to her parents. It is a map that explains the story of Weeborg Cytch.
10 The Delpino family walks down some stairs inside the ship, and find the dining room. The realize that the picture Pippi found is actually the cover of the menu. A shark in a chef’s hat meets them at the door. “Hello! I am Chef Sharkira,” he says. At a table behind him, five small sharks and their mother are sitting at a table, eating from bowls of fish soup with a spoon. They are the Sharkira family. “I’m hungry!” one of the shark children shouts. When he hears that, Dybala starts to sweat. He goes to the men’s bathroom to wash his face. He is standing at the sink when he looks in the mirror and sees the robot sitting on the toilet. He runs out of the bathroom.
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12 Finally, the Delpinos get to their cabin. Their suitcases are already there. Right away Dybala opens his suitcase to see if the money is still inside. It’s empty!!! Pippi looks at the empty suitcase with her mouth open in surprise. She tells her father that she took a few of the euros to buy bubble gum, but just a few. “We will talk about that later young lady,” Dybala says. He runs out of the room to find James Bond. The robot admits he took the money. “I ate it and it gave me a stomach ache,” he said. He pooped the money out in the bathroom of the restaurant. The Delpinos decide to go to sleep. There is nothing they can do right now to get back the money, and tomorrow they will feel better. But James Bond is awake all night. He goes up to the deck to try to
13 connect with the aliens with the metal bowl that belongs to Weeborg Cytch. The sky starts to look bigger, and then the planets in the sky start getting closer and closer to the boat. Just as the boat is about to bump into one of the planets, James Bond sees the danger. He presses a red button on the metal bowl and the cruise ship turns back into a spaceship!
14 The spaceship that used to be a cruise ship flies fast away from the Earth and into the cosmos. It rockets by planets, stars and even a black hole. The witch Weeborg Cytch is at the controls. The poor Sharkira family is locked inside a cage; the five little Sharkiras are very sad. But Weeborg Cytch is very happy. The space ship is headed for the Weeborg planet. On the Weeborg planet everyone has two heads, just like Weeborg Cytch. The witch goes to the Delpino family and wakes them up. She has a gun. James Bond helps her to tie the hands of Dybala, Johanna and Pippi behind their backs. They march Pippi and her parents to a great hall filled with cages, each with a big glass window. This is the Weeborg zoo. Cytch and Bond push
15 the Delpinos into a cage. The Delpino parents are scared; Dybala starts to cry. Pippi is the only one who doesn’t look worried. Not at all. She is chewing bubble gum, and she chews it hard, thinking of what to do.
16 The Delpinos are not alone. In one cage there is a unicornwe finally know where the unicorns disappeared to when they vanished from the Earth! They can see the Sharkira family behind another wall of glass. And also Manel Navarro from the Eurovision contest! And Aila, and all of the kids from the 5th grade class at Angel Baixeras! And even their teacher, Joana Puig. And there’s Donald Trump, in a cage next to the Delpinos. Pippi waits until Weeborg Cytch and James Bond leave for the night. Then she taps on the glass to get everyone’s attention. “I have a plan to escape!”
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18 Pippi starts to take pieces of bubble gum out of her pockets – lots and lots of bubble gum that she bought with the money that she took from her father’s suitcase. Then she asks the Sharkira family to help. The big and little Sharkiras cut through the glass of their cage with their sharp teeth. Then they cut the glass on everyone’s cage, and everyone is free. Except for Donald Trump. He is the only one who is left inside the Weeborg zoo. Everyone else shoves a handful, or a pawful, or a hoof full, or a clawful of gum into their mouth and runs outside. Soon they are all chewing like crazy. They blow huge bubbles, bubble after bubble, until they make a giant bubble gum spaceship. It has bubble houses, a bubble gum store (in case they need more bubblegum), and even a bubble gum jungle.
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20 The bubble gum ship flies through space, until it reaches Planet Earth. Pippi drives the spaceship, and prepares to come in for a landing in Barcelona. She aims toward the hand of the statue of Columbus in the port of Barcelona. When the bubblegum spaceship touches Columbus’s finger, it pops! Everyone falls out. The Delpinos are glad to be home. But they didn’t have a very good trip, and they never got to have their Caribbean vacation. “Come on Mom and Dad,” Pippi begs. “Let’s do it again.”
21 Dybala and Johanna give in. They decide to get on another cruise to the Caribbean. Now they really need a vacation. And after all, what could go wrong this time? They go to the ticket window to buy three tickets for another cruise ship. Too bad they don’t notice that it’s Weeborg Cytch who is selling the tickets... TO BE CONTINUED
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group biography We are 5th class students, our school is Àngel Baixeras. We are 21 boys and girls in the class, 9 girls &12 boys: Aila, Alessandro, Anita, Ariana, David, Hugo, Jhosua, Joshua, Judith, Júlia, Kosmo, Lola, Loubna, Lucas, Marcel, Martí, Mateo, Nanami, Pol, Òscar and Ximena. We come from many different countries. We are good friends and we are very funny. We are a team. It’s our first book written in English, and we feel very proud. We thank Judy, Roser and Joana for their help.
We are a group!