Fascinating and inventive tales based on weird but true facts (revealed at the back). FROM THE BACK COVER Perhaps you would like to know how "A Topsy-Turvy Planet" came to be written. Well, it was this way: The launching of the first manned spaceship fired all our youngsters with the ambition to be astronauts. And who could blame them? There's such a thrill about the very words - stars, rockets, weightlessness. And the prospect of swimming in air as you do in water, even head down if you so please. And all the surprises sure to be waiting for you on those distant planets - all the extraordinary beasts, and birds, and plants, and landscapes, so different from all that we are accustomed to seeing here on Earth. But - I reflected - is not our own Earth rich in extraordinary beasts, and birds, and plants, and landscapes? And in the most amazing of adventures, too? Was it not here that Baron Munchausen and Tartarin of Tarascon performed their incredible exploits? And both Munchausen and Tartarin pale before my good friend Paramon, whose stories - and the name Paramon, I would have you know, means Firm and Reliable - whose stories are so fascinating that not even a ticket to the films, not even the most exciting of TV programmes can tear the youngsters away when he gets to talking. And so I decided to put some of these stories of Paramon's into a book, for all the youngsters to read; because I, too, like Paramon, am convinced that nowhere in creation can you find more beautiful, more amazing, more interesting a planet than our own Earth. Perhaps it is just that I have never visited outer space, not even in my dreams, that makes me feel that way about it. Or, perhaps, it is simply the deep love I bear to this Earth we live on, to its familiar - and unfamiliar - seas and mountains, forests and plains, birds and beasts. All the books I have written - fifteen of them! - are devoted to Nature as we find her here on Earth. There's one about hunters after bird songs; another about mountain trails that lead no one knows where; a third about what you can see out of the corners of your eyes; a fourth about friendship among birds; a fifth about ten used cartridge cases and the memories each of them holds fresh for the hunter. You'll know these books if you come across them, for their titles reveal their content: "Hunting Bird Songs," "Nameless Trail," "Out of the Corners of Your Eyes," "Bird Friendship," and "Ten Used Cartridges." The remaining ten are of the same type. So much for my books. As to my own life story, there's no room left for that. Some other time, perhaps. N. SLADKOV