348Z: The Griffins Who Loved Tragedies and Other Short Stories (Solved!)

Collection of magical and wacky short stories for children, I believe it was an anthology of different authors, but I’m not sure. The edition I read in the 2000s had a cover illustrated with dancing pumpkins entwined with various characters from the short stories. It was old, maybe 70s or 80s? One story was of the pumpkins, someone tended them too well and they danced around the town causing havoc, another involved too much bubblegum. The only story I remember in detail was one of an author who wrote comedies. Everyone loved them, but he dreamed of writing tragedies. Whenever he tried submitting tragedies to his publisher, he was turned down. Being the father of two boys, he can’t afford to stop writing his jokes. These two boys also wanted a swimming pool. One night the author threw his tragedy out the window, and the pages floated to the mountains. The next few nights he heard crying coming from the mountain – and finally he went to investigate. There he found a griffin, crying over a few pages of his manuscript. Griffins, apparently, love tragedies. So the author offers to write him more, and give dramatic readings, and the griffin brings his friends, and their tears flow down the mountain, and become a natural swimming pool for the author’s boys, who become the best swimmers at their school.

2 thoughts on “348Z: The Griffins Who Loved Tragedies and Other Short Stories (Solved!)

  1. Rachel

    Thank to the commentor on another post I sent in, I did some research and found out the above is an anthology by the SAME AUTHOR as my other post! It’s “The Chewing Gum Rescue and Other Stories” by Margaret Mahy, with the story detailed above being “The Midnight Story on Griffon Hill.” Thanks again Marissa!

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