A short story by Gianluca Busuttil, aged 9

One night, in Ann's nursery, all the toys were running around the room chasing a goblin. They were trying to catch him because he had stolen some sweets from the toys' sweetshop. The shopkeeper had tried to stop him but the goblin was too fast for him. Since the goblin was much faster than the rest of the toys, he was very hard to catch.

When the goblin finally got tired of stealing all sorts of sweets, he started to steal other things as well. He first stole Rosebud the doll's brooch, and then the teddy bear's bow too.

Some days later, while the toys were talking to each other, the goblin came out of his mouse hole and was spotted by the toys. "There's the goblin," quacked Daffy duck. "Oh how I wish I was on the pond eating worms," he sighed. All of a sudden, the goblin scrambled back to his mouse hole. "Hey! The goblin has left without stealing anything!" roared the teddy bear.

"But how?" asked Daffy.

"He must have been frightened by something," replied Rosebud.

"Hmm", said the toy clown. "What did you say when the goblin came in, Daffy?"

"Oh, err ... I was saying that I wish I was on the pond eating worms," replied Daffy.

"Worms! That's it! He's afraid of worms!," yelled the toy clown (So loudly that the other toys were afraid that he might wake Ann up).

"We'll find some worms and scare him off with them!"

"But where are we going to get worms from?" asked the clockwork mouse.

Then, suddenly, an idea popped into the teddy bear's head. He ran to the paint box and pulled out a few tubes of paint.

"Look! We can squeeze paint out of the tubes to make long worms!" shouted the teddy bear.

Everyone wanted to try and there was a tube for almost everyone, except the rag doll, who was the last one to join the excitement. But he wasn't going to be left out of the fun very easily! He climbed on to the sink, brought the toothpaste down and started squeezing it out of its tube!

That night, when the goblin jumped out of his mouse-hole, the toys were ready for him. The goblin grinned at the toys and called out, "Let's play Pinch-me-Last!" in his cheekiest tone. "No," replied the teddy bear. "Let's play WORMS!" He squeezed a long fat worm out of his tube. "Eeek!" shrieked the goblin. Everyone started squeezing long worms out of their own tubes!

The goblin scrambled back to his mouse-hole as fast as his legs could carry him, and was never seen again.

The next morning Ann woke up to find all the paints on the floor. In fact, there wasn't any more paint in the tubes! Ann wondered what could have caused this mess, as she cleaned up all the paints!

But that's our little secret!