Author(s): Michelle Osment

New Zealand titles - children

Miss Dott takes her umbrella (in case it rains) and leaves it outside the charity shop where she works. One of the customers, having just bought a new shirt that he doesn't want to get wet, borrows the umbrella (with the intention of bringing it back shortly), and leaves it outside the music shop. A girl leaving the shop spies the umbrella and borrows it with the promise that she'll be back in an hour, and off she goes to the hairdressers ...And so it goes on until we have gone full circle and the umbrella ends up back outside the charity shop by the time Miss Dott is ready to leave for home - and discovers that it's not raining and she needn't have brought it at all! This manuscript won the Joy Cowley Award in 2008.