The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon Page B

Corn (because it comes out in your poo and you don't digest it so you are not really meant to eat it, like grass or leaves)

    BROWN

    1. Dirt
    2. Gravy
    3. Poo
    4. Wood (because people used to make machines and vehicles out of wood, but they don't anymore because wood breaks and goes rotten and has worms in it sometimes, and now people make machines and vehicles out of metal and plastic, which are much better and more modern)
    5. Melissa Brown (who is a girl at school, who is not actually brown like Anil or Mohammed, it's just her name, but she tore my big astronaut painting into two pieces and I threw it away even after Mrs. Peters sellotaped it together again because it looked broken)

    Mrs. Forbes said that hating yellow and brown is just being silly. And Siobhan said that she shouldn't say things like that and everyone has favorite colors. And Siobhan was right. But Mrs. Forbes was a bit right, too. Because it is sort of being silly. But in life you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do. So it is good to have a reason why you hate some things and you like others. It is like being in a restaurant like when Father takes me out to a Berni Inn sometimes and you look at the menu and you have to choose what you are going to have. But you don't know if you are going to like something because you haven't tasted it yet, so you have favorite foods and you choose these, and you have foods you don't like and you don't choose these, and then it is simple.
    137. The next day Father said he was sorry that he had hit me and he didn't mean to. He made me wash the cut on my cheek with Dettol to make sure that it wasn't infected, then he got me to put a plaster on it so it didn't bleed.
    Then, because it was Saturday, he said he was going to take me on an expedition to show me that he was properly sorry, and we were going to Twycross Zoo. So he made me some sandwiches with white bread and tomatoes and lettuce and ham and strawberry jam for me to eat because I don't like eating food from places I don't know. And he said it would be OK because there wouldn't be too many people at the zoo because it was forecast to rain, and I was glad about that because I don't like crowds of people and I like it when it is raining. So I went and got my waterproof, which is orange.
    Then we drove to Twycross Zoo.
    I had never been to Twycross Zoo before so I didn't have a route worked out in my mind before we got there, so we bought a guidebook from the information center and then we walked round the whole zoo and I decided which were my favorite animals.
    My favorite animals were

    1. RANDYMAN, which is the name of the oldest Red-Faced Black Spider Monkey
(Ateles paniscus paniscus)
ever kept in captivity. Randyman is 44 years old, which is the same age as Father. He used to be a pet on a ship and have a metal band round his stomach, like in a story about pirates.
    2. The PATAGONIAN SEA LIONS, which are called Miracle and Star.
    3. MALIKU, which is an Orangutan. I liked it especially because it was lying in a kind of hammock made out of a pair of stripy green pajama bottoms and on the blue plastic notice next to the cage it said it made the hammock itself.

    Then we went to the café and Father had plaice and chips and apple pie and ice cream and a pot of Earl Grey tea and I had my sandwiches and I read the guidebook to the zoo.
    And Father said, “I love you very much, Christopher. Don't ever forget that. And I know I lose my rag occasionally. I know I get angry. I know I shout. And I know I shouldn't. But I only do it because I worry about you, because I don't want to see you getting into trouble, because I don't want you to get hurt. Do you understand?”
    I didn't know whether I understood. So I said, “I don't know.”
    And Father said, “Christopher, do you understand that I love you?”
    And I said “Yes,” because loving