Mini-Animalist Series
Story of a Cockroach Text © 2011 Carmen Gil Illustrations © 2011 Sonja Wimmer This edition © 2011 Cuento de Luz SL Calle Claveles 10 | Urb Monteclaro | Pozuelo de Alarcón | 28223 Madrid | Spain | www.cuentodeluz.com Original title in Spanish: Historia de una Cucaracha Translated into English by Cálamo & Cran (Nedra Rivera Huntington) ISBN: 978-84-15241-22-5 Printed by Shanghai Chenxi Printing Co., Ltd in PRC, September 2011, print number xxx All rights reserved
Story Cockroach
of a
by Carmen Gil & Sonja Wimmer
a
&
asi t s a n A
d I’m a cockroach. an a si ta as An is me na My Like everyone else of my species for the past three hundred thousand years, I like to live in nice, warm, safe places. Myself in particular, I prefer the cracks along the baseboards in the living room, the gaps in the kitchen cupboards or the bathroom pipes. But don’t think my life is easy. It isn’t! Over my long year of existence, I can have up to four hundred children. And so, as you may imagine, I spend my days surrounded by crying baby cockroaches needing to be fed. Fortunately, they’ll make do with any old thing. They will just as happily wolf down a ball of lint as a strip of cardboard.
le,
a responsib ’m I , l ow on’t bite like g a night
ody. I d or bein f b y n n w a o o n t k m r ’m people with no ha y s o e n o n d Although I a o ’t h n w o Id g cockroach e rats; and k li s g in h t peace-lovin n on’t gnaw o d I ; s e o it u mosq adas. t me. For s ic e c t e e d k li y e g h n t t, my noisy so why. In fac w o n ut, f lap k o h ’t s n , o h d c I e e d r n sc a e me, they e till hate me s s y s e n h a t m e u ash me. h im m t s y o Yet r t e v g e , in y n r o t rious reas ime, end up t e h t f o some myste t s mo ound and, r a s m r a ir the
er from o surprise that I suff
It’s n
broomophobia.* * a terrible fear of brooms.
Of course, there are those who prefer to exterminate me with a stomp of their foot or by using one of those sprays that household cockroaches are so afraid of. But in any case, getting squished to a pulp is better than being boiled to death slowly in a witch’s cauldron—witches absolutely love tossing us into their potions—or ending up fried in a pan, which is what happens to my brothers in some tropical countries. The truth is, I just can’t understand it: people love and appreciate other insects that are similar to me. In fact, they find my cousins the crickets so likeable that human children adopt them and lovingly feed them chunks of tomato. And can you imagine? They are so popular that one of them, Jiminy Cricket, was the lead actor in a famous movie and since then all he ever does is sign autographs. He even bought himself a luxurious mansion in Miami!
And what can I say about my relatives the beetles? In Egypt they were considered sacred animals and treated like royalty. What luck! I, on the other hand, am seen as a repugnant and disgusting creature by all. And the one time they mention me in that Cucaracha song, my two back legs are missing...
y. od
h it w ce s a l e p d a r t t ’ n d woul I , t a h But, despite all t
y an
b
And the thing is, I wasn’t always a cockroach... once I was a princess. Princess Anastasia. What happened was that one winter’s night, as I was leaving my hideout to look for food in the garbage can and complaining of my luck, Fairy Brunhilda, doyenne of the Academy of Magic, heard my laments and took pity on me. Not one for timidity or sloth, she took up her wand, waved it in the air and said a few magic words:
so reviled, Let this cockroach be now a girl, a hum an child,
princess of the Land of Frond a kingdom in the back of beyond. In less time than it takes a dog to bark or a cow to say moo, I was transformed into a princess, the kind that lives in a castle and sleeps in a canopy bed.
Hidden pages
This is the story of Anastasia, a cockroach who dreamed of being accepted and becoming famous and important like her distant relatives the Egyptian beetles, sacred insects that were treated like royalty. Although it may seem impossible to believe, in another life Anastasia was a princess, transformed by a wave of the magic wand of Fairy Brunhilda, who was determined to sow good wherever she went. But following her exciting adventures, Anastasia came to understand that being a normal, everyday cockroach wasn’t such a bad thing after all when, moved by her great heart, she managed to save the lives of an entire family of humans, all without getting a hair out of place! What prize did Fairy Brunhilda have in store for her as a reward for her generous actions? Written with a great sense of humor, Story of a Cockroach is an entertaining tale about accepting oneself and helping others. When you finish the book, you will look at cockroaches in a different light‌