The Lie

The Lie was the first installment of the Fisher-Price Read & Play Puddle Books series of interactive storybooks, produced in 1995 and released in 1996, and re-released from The Family Software Club without the Fisher-Price awning in 1998. It is the first volume not to feature Blake Sutton.

Unlike the other Puddle Books where P.J. Puddles was a narrator, the main character of the story, Susie, appears in P.J.'s place instead.

Characters

 * Susie
 * Melanie
 * Tommy Jacobs
 * Mrs. Chatney
 * Newt the orange lizard
 * Susie's mom
 * Susie's dad
 * The Lie
 * Video store clerk (heard only)
 * The zookeeper
 * Kyle
 * The Lie's friends
 * Louis the boy w/ glasses
 * Katie the red-haired girl
 * Jackson the boy w/ blue jacket

The Children

 * Rhea Hutton
 * K'idar Miller
 * Caitlin Nicholas
 * Erica Palmiter
 * Zachary Perret
 * Will Smitherman
 * Katja Wallin

Songs

 * I'm a Lie
 * Don't Fall Asleep
 * I Don't Want to Go
 * We Are Lies
 * I Told a Lie

Plot
At school, Susie worries about having homework on a weekend. The orange lizard escapes from it's habitat and triggers an alarm. At home, Susie's mother stated that they have a busy weekend planned. Susie then says that Mrs. Chatney didn't give any homework for the weekend. A small magical blue-green creature magically appears above Susie, and her mother tells her to go pick up her room so that they can go rent a movie.

Susie then cleans up her room, but shortly after finishing, a strange blue-green creature known as a "lie" magically appears in front of her. Susie asks "Who are you?" The Lie then sings about herself and destroys a bit of Susie's room in the process. Her mother asks Susie if she is finished picking up her room, and Susie says she did, and The Lie magically grows.

At the video store, The Lie knocks videotapes off the shelves, and Susie picks them up. The video store clerk asks if she cleaned up that mess, but The Lie stomps and knocks two tapes off the shelf. Susie says she picked them all up, and The Lie grows again. Back in the living room where Susie is watching the tape, The Lie jumps all over the place, and Susie even throws popcorn into The Lie's Mouth. When it was bedtime and when Susie was trying to sleep, The Lie tries to find ways to keep Susie awake.

The next morning, The Lie marks himself on a growth chart and both Susie and The Lie make phone calls. Dad tells Susie is she is still on the telephone, Susie answers no and The Lie grows again. Susie's mom says that since Susie has no homework to do, they spend a day at the zoo.

At the zoo, The Lie then teases the monkeys, the polar bears, and the lions (and even drawing herself and her name on the lion's info board) causing them to go away. The zookeeper comes by and asks where did all the animals go? Susie say's she doesn't know, and The Lie grows more. The Lie then pours all it's soda on the polar bear's ice, throws candy at hippos, popcorn at apes, and even hit some of the tigers with grapes. The zookeeper asks if Susie is the one whose been teasing all the animals, and Susie then leaves the zoo.

On the way home, Susie was dropped off at the park, with her mother saying she would be home before dark. Susie then meets Kyle, who says that he has to go home for supper now, and then The Lie trips over Kyle. Kyle then blames Susie for tripping him but Susie says she didn't, and Kyle then goes away. P.J. Puddles comes out from a bush saying how that Lie sure is big, and wonders what's going to happen next.

Back at home for dinner, The Lie turns off the light and destroys the kitchen, and Susie's mom is shocked to see, asking Susie if she make this mess, Susie says it was the cat, but they don't have a cat! The Lie then grows bigger, and Susie is sent to bed with no cake for dessert. At bedtime, Susie was not very happy with The Lie, she pushed and shoved it and said "Go Away!" But The Lie still wanted to stay. The very next morning, Susie could not find The Lie until she finds The Lie in the bathroom, eating Susie's brush and destroying the bathroom!

Susie then prepares for Melanie's big birthday bash, but Susie finds the The Lie threw her present in the trash! Susie then wraps her present and heads for the door. On the way to the party, Susie hopes that The Lie doesn't follow her. But when she arrives Susie finds that the monstrous imp had invited her friends: a huge pack of Lies! They ate all the ice cream and popped the balloons, and then Adam kicks a ball and hits a lie, causing that lie to throw the cake at Tommy Jacobs, and then another lie grabs onto balloons and goes up into the air, only to have giant hand pop them, with that lie falling on a table, sending a punch bowl into the air and landing onto Melanie, Tommy Jacobs and Katie, the red-haired girl! There then is a food fight, and then all of a sudden, climbing up onto Melanie's house what appears to be Susie's now ginormous Lie, and Susie confesses that she told a lie! And then the giant lie along with all of the other lies magically disappear.

Susie's parents said she was punished enough from all those lies she told. When the weekend was done, The Lie disappeared and Susie's wish came true, but now Susie still has her homework assignment to do... The orange lizard then crawls up onto the desk, grabs the cookie and takes a bite of it, and the screen circles out and the story ends.

Puddle Pages

 * Page One - Chalkboard Activity: Clickable Objects: Susie, Melanie, Tommy Jacob, The orange lizard, a food can, a plant, a clock, the chalkboard (you can write on it), the slide screen.
 * Page Two - Tic-Tac-Toe: Clickable Objects: The computer
 * Page Three - Susie's Room: Clickable objects: various items in Susie's room. Pick up and put away items in Susie's room. Susie will then make her bed, and then The Lie will appear and sing her theme song. Nothing else is clickable after The Lie concludes her song.
 * Page Four - Video Pickup: Clickables: Sci-Fi sign (The Lie in a spacesuit will appear, clicking on her once will make her go up, and clicking the switch will make him go down.), Western sign, Drama sign, "New Releases" sign, The Fuzzooly Family poster, Stay Tooned! poster, Louie Lumpfield poster.
 * Page Five - Catch the Popcorn: The Lie jumps all over the living room, and then you play the catch the popcorn game. Click on The Lie to throw the popcorn. The Remote is clickable after you throw all the popcorn. Clicking the remote will play a snippet from Funnybone's Stay Tooned! where Fiddle sees the little birdy, he pets it and the bird gets furious that he hits Fiddle and sends him flying! It then advertises "coming soon".
 * Page Six - Don't Go to Sleep: Clickables: The bed, the alarm clock, the lamp, the drawer, the door, the toy chest, the ceiling, the picture with the pony, the picture of Susie's family.
 * Page Seven - Phone Friends: You can make phone calls, with a list of the numbers to call. You can call Dino's Pizza, City Zoo, Flora's Flowers, Grandma, Dad's Office, Melanie, and The Cute Company, Sometimes calling Flora's will trigger an scene with the flowers getting delivered to the house, only to have The Lie pull out a beehive and send the bees flying up to the delivery person. Sometimes, calling with random numbers will get a message from a radio station named "W-LIE". Once you click the frog once, you leave the phone and clicking the window will trigger an animation where the Pizzas from Dino's were delivered to the house, but the lie will sent the Pizza truck rolling away, and the delivery guy after it.
 * Page Eight - Zoo Zainess: Clickables: The polar bears, the hippos, the lions (click on their habitat twice and The Lie will draw on the info board) The infoboards.
 * Page Nine - Feed the Animals: Feed the hippos with their cabbage and tiger with his steak. Sometimes a peacock will pass by and you cannot do anything for a second.
 * Page Ten - Play at the Park: Clickable Objects: The bush (Susie will appear and tells you a secret: clicking on the merry-go-round will make it go faster and faster), The merry go round, Tommy Jacobs, the unnamed red-haired girl, the unnamed boy w/ glasses, LIE sign carved on tree.
 * Page Eleven - Dinner With the Lie: Clickable objects: a juice cup, mashed potatoes, salads, the bread, Susie's dad w/ newspaper, The Lie, a teapot, the light switch. Clicking the light switch will cause the room to go dark and when they come back on the kitchen will be a mess. Clickable objects after that are the newspaper, a crack in the wall, The Lie (she will throw a mashed potato at Susie, her hat will fall and you fix it up). The mashed potatoes (Susie will dodge the mashed potato The Lie threw)
 * Page Twelve - It's Time to Sleep: Clickable objects: The Lie, the lamp, Susie, a basketball (You can throw and drop it all around Susie's Room)
 * Page Thirteen - Bathroom Mischief - Clickable objects: The Lie (in the mirror), the toothbrush and cup, the faucets, the sink, the towel, toilet paper, the toilet handle, the picture frame, the tissue box, the rubber duck)
 * Page Fourteen - Present Wrapping: Help Susie wrap the present by following her step-by-step instructions. Clickable objects after doing so are The Lie and the banana peel.
 * Page Fifteen - Neighborhood Antics
 * Page Sixteen - Pin the Tail on the Donkey
 * Page Seventeen - Things Get Out of Hand
 * Page Eighteen - I Told a Lie

Trivia

 * Coincidentally, the 1997 VeggieTales video Larry-Boy and the Fib from Outer Space has a similar plot, in which the character fibs and a "fib" creature appears and grows larger with every fib until it dissapears when the character who told the lie tells the truth.
 * The video store scenes have advertisements for two other Puddle Books The Fuzzooly Family and Louie Lumpfield, along with Funnybone's action-adventure game Stay Tooned!
 * Another Stay Tooned! reference is seen in the living room scene, where clicking the power button on the remote playing a scene with Fiddle from the game.
 * One of the phone numbers appears to be named The Cute Company, the original name of Funnybone Interactive.