THE EPIC ADVENTURES OF WHIZ GRASS AND POOT BERRY
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
An excerpt from Adventure Twenty-One: Beaver Fury Fluff was stomping his feet as he spoke. This caused a great deal of duress to Poot, upon whose belly the stomping was occurring. Fluff: You wanna get a tree chewed, I’ll chew a tree. You wanna build a wooden fort, you bet, I’m your guy. But to face down an aerial assault of twenty screaming cats! You have got to be kidding me! Tails and claws and fangs from the sky! Whiz saw that Fluff was indeed still stomping his beaver feet into Poot’s belly. Whiz thought it best to interject. Whiz: But Fluff, you won, didn’t you? You chased them all away, right? The stomping stopped as Fluff considered this for a moment. Indeed, he had singlehandedly scared away a score of flying cats, which he quickly decided was not such a bad thing after all. He swelled his chest up. Fluff: True. Very, very true. This is a great day for beavers! With that, he jumped up for joy, landing again on Poot, who made an “Ooof” sound again. As Fluff jumped again, Poot saw his chance and rolled clear, leaving Fluff to land on the ground. Poot scrambled to his feet. Fluff: Hey, Pootster! How ya been? Did you see me fight off the cats? I told ya that boomerangs came in handy. Beavers rock! You saw it, didn’t you? Poot: I saw it, Fluff. I felt it, too. Fluff: Me too! I’m feeling it! I feel victory! I feel conquest! I….I…. He broke off then, frozen in place by a sudden and dramatic thought. Any outsider would have seen a beaver standing on his two hind legs, a boomerang in one paw over his head, the other paw pointed at the sky. Fluff simply stopped moving. Whiz: Say, uh, Mister Fluff? Fluff very slowly and deliberately turned to the cowboys. Fluff: I smell an egg. (Sniff the air experimentally and note that you also smell an egg somewhere in the bedroom. Tell your kids to search for it, saying “Hot” as they get close and “Cold” as they get farther away. When they find it, they will be dazzled by your egg-smelling skills! Oh, and put the egg back in the fridge before you slumber off.) Whiz and Poot exchanged a wary glance as Fluff pointed at Whiz’s saddlebag with his boomerang. Fluff: Not just any egg. You have THE egg! The egg from the Supreme Boneless Chicken! Do you know what this means? Whiz: Listen, before you get any ideas… Fluff: You have to protect that egg at all costs. Don’t eat it! Don’t… He abruptly stopped speaking and glanced around, peering into the woods on all sides. Fluff: We’re out in too much here. There are woodchucks in these parts. Poot: What do woodchucks do? Fluff: The name says it all. They chuck wood. Honestly, it’s like calling your friend “Two Ears” because they have two ears. Follow me. Quick! Fluff dashed away about twenty feet, then stopped and whirled, waving for the cowboys to follow him. Whiz and Poot hopped into their saddles and trotted along behind, but they soon had to move at a full gallop. They had forgotten how fast beavers truly are. Around more clumps of trees, through a field, down a valley, and around a corner to a brook they traveled before Fluff finally stopped. He wasn’t winded at all. Fluff: We’re safe here, but you’ll need to wrap that egg up in some dried leaves and mud to prevent the smell from getting out. Whiz: But this egg doesn’t smell. It’s still fresh! Fluff: Of course it smells, Whiz. You just don’t smell right. Poot: I do too smell! Fluff: Yes, you smell. You smell a big bunch. Now show me the egg. As Whiz and Poot dismounted from their horses, Whiz eased the egg from the saddlebag. Fluff was a good five feet away but could identify it immediately. Fluff: That’s the egg, all right. I can tell just by looking at it. The cowboys stared at the egg, then back at Fluff. Whiz: It looks like an egg to me. Poot: Me, too. Very eggy. Fluff: So, if five children walk by right now, do they all look the same to you? Of course not! Same with eggs, they all look different if you know what to look for. That one’s special. And a whole bunch of nasty critters are going to be after it. We better wrap that up. He hustled to the brook and returned with two pawfuls of mud and leaves. Fluff motioned for Whiz to place the egg on a soft mound of grass. As Whiz did so, Fluff gave a short sigh of relief before applying the protective mud. Fluff: Two layers of mud, one layer of leaves, then mud and twigs. This will cut down on the smell. Don’t worry, the egg will still work when you need it to. Whiz: What do you mean, it will still work? Fluff: Shhhh! Fluff scampered to Poot’s saddlebag and gingerly placed the egg inside. He shook the excess mud from his paws, grabbed his boomerang, pointed into the woods and whispered. Fluff: Dogs. I hear about forty of them. I’ll go fight them off. Get out of here. Whiz: This isn’t your fight, Mister Fluff. Fluff: If that egg’s involved, it’s everybody’s fight. Go! With that, Fluff bolted deep into the woods, toward a sound that neither Whiz nor Poot could hear. Then, ever so faintly, a quiet sound slipped through the trees. It was the low “bong” from a silver cowbell. Whiz: Did you hear that? Poot: That’s the silver cowbell we gave Jose’! We gotta help! All hesitation gone now, Whiz and Poot spurred Pete and Repete into the woods after Fluff. They knew they would protect the egg. But they also knew they could not let the call of that silver cowbell go ignored.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
As you should have guessed by the title, this is not the standard bedtime story with a princess and a prince and an evil stepparent and some sort of magic spell. Not one castle, nor trolls, not even an enchanted forest is tucked with loving care into this bedtime story. To be totally honest about the whole shebang, it’s not so much a bedtime story as a bedtime epic event. An explanation may be in order right about now. There are 30 Adventures in this saga, to be read in order as bedtime stories. No skipping around, mind you, because it will make even less sense if you do that, so when you get to the Temple of the Belchmonkeys and your mind is not totally prepared for it, well, that’s a whole different bucket of pickles altogether. And you could rip through more than one story in a night, but that might just make your kids loopy. 30 Adventures, 30 nights, so you’re pretty much covered for a month. Now, somebody’s going to screech that some months have 31 days (thanks, May and October and you other troublemakers for screwing this up) and so you have a day left over. And there’s some real hollering going on about the February problem, and how if you read this story during that month, even during a leap year, you still have extra story left over. The thing is, the story is 30 nights long because it’s a nice round number (unlike 31, which is prime, for crying out loud) and that’s how long the story takes to tell. So there. The important idea is that this is an interactive story. Not a passive story where your kid lays there like an unfortunate lump on the mattress and you yammer on until you bore the poor child to sleep. This story has a narrator reading the action lines (that’s you, sport). There are also 21 different voices in the tale, all of which you’ll have fun doing. Even better, let your child read along and read a voice or two. The full list of voices is on the next few pages, plus what we think they sound like, although you can change them pretty much any way you want. It’s not like we’re keeping score. Also, you will find action lines sprinkled throughout. You’ll recognize these because they’re in italics so they look like they’re in motion, hence we call them action lines and they instruct you or your offspring to do certain things. Be nice and gentle, since you’ll have to start a pillow fight in Adventure 1. Remember, you’re bigger. Play nice.
About the Author
Frank Barnas faced a problem. The kids, Church and Aloura, were bored with the typical bedtime stories that had been memorized, yawned at, and recited a thousand times. So, why not a new story? A story with 30 adventures to be told over 30 nights, each adventure with voices for the kids, activities so they don't get bored, and a cliffhanger to perk them up for the next night. This story spans 30 nights of bedtimes with socks as boomerangs, bad impersonations of occasional monkeys, cows, beavers and chickens, and voices so awesome that anyone who can fake a Texas twang will find themselves at home. Home for Frank, Church and Aloura is in Georgia. Where the bedtime stories allow them to sleep soundly at night.