Samira's Wish
Samira's grandparents are coming to stay for the weekend, to celebrate Grandpa's birthday. Samira has a surprise in store for them. A cooked breakfast! Sadly, Samira's dad scoffs the baked beans when he comes home from work in the early hours of the morning. (He has no idea they were meant to be part of grandpa's surprise.) There is no time for Samira's mum to go to the supermarket so Samira has to go to the corner shop. This is a dusty old place run by Mrs. April. Samira is scared of her because she has a moustache and has never been in the place. But, seeing this is an emergency, she plucks up the courage. Mrs April has only one tin of beans in stock, and it has a very special offer printed on the label. One magic wish come true with every spoonful of beans. (only one wish per person) Back home, everyone thinks the offer is a joke. Buy when Grandpa wishes for a hardback book by his favourite author (he's waiting for the paperback), it comes true. Immediately everyone in the family makes a wish, and the wishes keep on getting bigger, greedier and more ridiculous. When Grandma wishes for a horse, it wrecks the cramped living room so Mum wishes for a bigger house. This has the unfortunate effect of squashing the adjoining houses. The neighbours come to complain and soon the whole estate is at war. Samira wants to make her own wish, to be transported away from the chaos and to a far off place on a unicorn. But there are no beans left. She visits Mrs April in the hope that there might be another tin left, one that Mrs April overlooked. There are none. Mrs April looks in the tin and there is one last bean stuck to the underside of the lid. Is it enough to make Samira's wish come true? Mrs April warns Samira that she has to wish wisely. Samira thinks for a bit, then she eats the bean and wishes she hadn't opened the tin yet. Suddenly everything goes back to what it was before, no fighting on the estate, no squashed houses, no horse wrecking the living room... Now Samira has a whole tin of wishes all over again. But what will she wish for.....?