The Water Horse - Tapa blanda

When a storm washes up a strange pod-like object on the seashore, Kirstie decides to take it home and put it in the bath. The next day it hatches into a tiny green-grey creature, with a horse's head, a warty skin, four flippers and a crocodile's tail. The author also wrote "Paddy's Pot of Gold".

Dick King-Smith served in the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, and afterwards spent twenty years as a farmer in Gloucestershire, the county of his birth. Many of his stories are inspired by his farming experiences. He wrote a great number of children's books, including The Sheep-Pig (winner of the Guardian Award and filmed as Babe), Harry's Mad, The Hodgeheg, Martin's Mice, The Invisible Dog, The Queen's Nose and The Crowstarver. At the British Book Awards in 1991 he was voted Children's Author of the Year. In 2009 he was made OBE for services to children's literature. Dick King-Smith died in 2011 at the age of eighty-eight.