In the Kitchen, page 3
Mrs. Scuttle opened the door of the toaster oven, put in a slice of bread, closed the door, and flipped a switch.
Then she stomped back to the refrigerator. The next second, Andrew and Thudd were zooming out of the refrigerator into the warm air of the kitchen. It was as if the butter dish were a flying saucer!
They landed on the kitchen counter, right next to the plate where Mrs. Scuttle had made her tomato-and-cheese sandwich.
Ding!
Mrs. Scuttle took the hot toast out of the toaster oven and put it on the plate.
Then Andrew saw a silver flash. It was the knife again!
The blade slammed into the stick of butter and peeled the butter away in a huge wave of yellow. It curled toward Andrew and Thudd, picked them up, and swept them away!
They lifted off into the air and then swooped down. Andrew could see they were headed for the huge brown field of toast below!
The butter landed, and Andrew began to feel warm—toasty warm.
meep … “Warm, warm, warm!” squeaked Thudd. “Getting dry!”
Andrew smiled. “Super-duper pooper scooper!”
The butter was melting. Andrew was getting as buttery as Thudd! The knife started smooshing the butter around the bread like a snowplow. Andrew and Thudd ended up on the very edge of the bread crust.
Andrew looked down over the bread crust to the plate below. He saw lots of breadcrumbs and some sparkling, cube-shaped boulders.
meep … “Salt!” said Thudd. “Salt come from salt cave. Salt cave happen when old ocean dry up!”
Then Thudd got excited.
meep … “Look!” he squeaked. “Blue!”
Andrew squinted in the direction Thudd was pointing. There was a speck of blue behind one of the salt boulders. Above the blue was a bit of frizzy brown!
“Judy!” said Andrew.
“Oody!” said Thudd.
Judy didn’t look up. She was too far away to hear their tiny voices.
“Hmm,” murmured Andrew. “I have an idea.”
He threw the end of the Drastic Elastic toward Judy. It zoomed past her and bounced off a salt crystal. Judy spun around to see what had happened. Then she looked up. But she didn’t see them.
Andrew snapped the Drastic Elastic back. He whirled it over his head like a lasso and threw it again. This time the little cup on the end got caught on a salt crystal next to Judy.
Judy ran over to the cup. She picked it up and looked it over. Then she put it up to her mouth. Andrew put the other end up to his ear.
“WELL, HELLO, MR. BUG-BRAIN!” Judy yelled. She yelled so loudly that Andrew’s ear hurt! “Wait till I get my hands on you! Where have you been!”
“We’ve been chilling in the refrigerator,” said Andrew. “But the good news is that Thudd got buttered. And the toast is so warm it’s getting him dry! What happened to you? We were afraid you got microwaved on Mrs. Scuttle’s sandwich!”
“Almost!” said Judy. “But I got knocked off a slice of tomato by a grain of salt!”
Suddenly the toast started rising into the air. Mrs. Scuttle was about to take a bite!
Andrew felt a tug on the Drastic Elastic. Judy was trying to pull them off the crust and down to the plate. But the Drastic Elastic was caught on the crust!
Judy got dragged off the plate as Mrs. Scuttle raised the toast to her lips. Andrew yanked the Drastic Elastic free from the crust and gave it a sharp snap. Judy bounced up and landed beside him!
“Oh, great!” said Judy. She let go of her end of the Drastic Elastic and climbed over a buttery crumb. “Now we’re both going to be slurped up by rubbery Scuttle lips!”
The slice of toast paused in midair while Mrs. Scuttle took a sip of tea.
Bzzzzzz …
Andrew looked up to see a humongous, hairy fly dive-bombing the toast! The next thing they knew, Andrew and Judy were staring at two gigantic, glistening domes!
meep … “Fly eyes!” said Thudd. Then he pointed at the fly’s hairy feet. “See claw? Help fly climb. Fly got hairy foot pad. Make fly stick to slippery thing. Walk on glass! Walk on wall! Walk on ceiling! Fly taste with foot pad, too!”
A long, thick, rubbery tube uncurled from beneath the fly’s eyes.
meep … “Fly mouth!” said Thudd.
Something watery drooled out of the tube.
“Ewww!” said Judy. “What’s it doing?”
meep … “Fly not eat solid stuff,” said Thudd. “Fly throw up on food first. Turn food to mush. Fly suck mush through tube.”
“EWWW!” said Judy with a shudder.
“Think of that fly as our new best friend!” Andrew said. “Quick, get behind me and hang on! We’re taking off!”
“That’s a disgusting idea!” Judy groaned.
“It’s less disgusting than taking a tour of Mrs. Scuttle’s insides,” said Andrew.
Judy got behind Andrew and wrapped her arms around his chest. Andrew tied one end of the Drastic Elastic around himself and Judy. He twirled the other end of the Drastic Elastic like a lasso and swung it toward the head of the fly. It wrapped around behind the fly’s gigantic eyes!
Andrew tugged sharply on the Drastic Elastic. The next instant, Andrew, Thudd, and Judy snapped to a hairy patch behind the fly’s head!
“A fly again!” bellowed Mrs. Scuttle.
She dropped the toast, and the fly zoomed off. Andrew felt like a jet pilot! The wind pushed them into the hairs behind the fly’s head. The kitchen was a dizzy blur of colors and shapes.
Bzzzzzz …
The fly’s wings were buzzing right behind them!
Mrs. Scuttle’s angry voice boomed below. “Wait till I get my fly swatter!” she said.
The fly zigged and zagged and roller-coastered around the room.
I was getting hungry, thought Andrew, but I’m sure glad I haven’t eaten anything.
Then the fly came to a jolting stop! Andrew and Judy would have flown off the fly’s back if they hadn’t been held on by the Drastic Elastic. The fly was upside down!
“Andrew!” said Judy. “We’re on the ceiling!”
“Wowzers!” said Andrew. “I always wondered how flies landed upside down!”
meep… “Flying fly put up front legs,” said Thudd. “Front legs stick to ceiling. Then rest of fly stick to ceiling! What happen to duck that fly upside down? Quack up! Hee hee!”
Andrew sighed. “I guess you’re not totally cured yet.”
“Eeeyaaah!” screamed Mrs. Scuttle.
They looked down. Mrs. Scuttle was coming after them, waving her yellow fly swatter! “I’ll get rid of these filthy beasts if it’s the last thing I do!”
The fly zinged off the ceiling like an arrow from a bow. A second later, they slammed to a stop. When Andrew’s head stopped spinning, he saw green leaves. He was looking into Mrs. Scuttle’s yard! The fly had landed on Mrs. Scuttle’s screen door.
Behind them, Mrs. Scuttle was swishing the fly swatter.
“Gotcha now!” yelled Mrs. Scuttle.
The yellow blur of the fly swatter was coming straight at them!
We didn’t drown in Mrs. Scuttle’s bathtub, thought Andrew, but now we could drown in squished-up fly juice!
The fly zig-zagged across the screen door. It was heading for a hole in the screen! The fly folded its wings and squeezed through the hole!
The next second, they were flying at top speed through Mrs. Scuttle’s garden!
I wonder if I have any Bug-Goo with me, thought Andrew. If I do, I sure hope it’s not leaking….
TO BE CONTINUED IN ANDREW, JUDY, AND THUDD’S
NEXT EXCITING ADVENTURE:
ANDREW LOST
IN THE GARDEN!
In stores April 22, 2003
Thudd knows a lot, and what Thudd says is true! Thudd wanted to tell everything he knows about toilets and water and insects and eggs. But Andrew and Judy were too busy saving themselves from cockroaches and cooking to listen. Here are a few of the things Thudd wanted to say:
• Some people think that toilets flush counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. But that isn’t true. The way water flushes from a toilet or swirls around a drain depends on the way the toilet or sink or tub is made. It may take a while to find a toilet that flushes clockwise, but keep looking! You’ll find one.
• All the water on Earth came from outer space! Most of it came from the giant meteorites that smashed together to make the Earth. And some water probably came from icy comets that later crashed into the Earth.
• The same water has been on Earth for billions of years. It gets used over and over. You may be taking a bath in water that dinosaurs drank! You may be drinking water that a caveman took a bath in!
• You can drink caveman bathwater because bacteria have helped to clean it. When bacteria eat the bad stuff in water, they break it down into harmless stuff that plants and animals can use again.
• Many insects have huge eyes. But their eyes don’t see things clearly. Most of them couldn’t see the letters on this page or even a stop sign. What insect eyes do best is see things move. To an insect, movement says, “Danger!” A moving thing could be a hungry bird or a flapping fly swatter! Insect eyes can spot movement much more quickly than ours can.
• Many insects have eyes that wrap around their heads. This lets them see movement in front and in back and on the sides.
• Insects’ antennas feel things move. So does the hair on their bodies. Yours does, too. For example, your hair tells you when the wind moves!
• Heating food changes it. For example, a raw egg has clear gooey stuff around the yolk. The gooey stuff is made of protein molecules. Protein molecules are like tiny machines. They have moving parts and jobs to do. When you cook an egg, the gooey part gets white and solid. The heat has broken down the protein molecules. They stick together and can’t do their jobs anymore.
• You’re made up of lots of protein molecules. These molecules do their jobs best at your normal body temperature, about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s why high fevers are dangerous. The heat can cook your molecules!
• Butter is made from the fat in milk. If you got your milk straight from a cow, the milk would separate into two layers. The creamy fat would float on the watery part of the milk. That’s because fat is lighter than water. If you whipped the fatty part of milk, it would form solid chunks. Squashing the solid chunks together makes butter.
Find out more!
Visit www.AndrewLost.com.
It’s on your teeth! It’s in your nose! It’s all over your sandwich! It’s the weird, wriggling, microscopic zoo. You can see it in these books:
• MicroAliens: Dazzling Journeys with an Electron Microscope by Howard Tomb and Dennis Kunkel (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993)
• Hidden Worlds: Looking Through a Scientist’s Microscope by Stephen Kramer, with photographs by Dennis Kunkel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001)
• Yuck! A Big Book of Little Horrors by Robert Snedden and Steve Parker (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996)
Do you wonder how toilets flush or microwaves cook? Find out how all kinds of things work in this funny book (the pictures are great, too):
• The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay and Neil Ardley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998)
If you want to learn about bugs and see them in 3-D, check out this big, fat book:
• The Big Book of Bugs edited by Matthew Robertson (New York: Welcome Enterprises, 1999)
Did you ever find a potato that looked like it had a face? Can you make a banana peel look like an octopus? Would you like to make a pear look like a bear? Then you might have fun with this book:
• Play with Your Food by Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1997)
Turn the page
for a sneak peek at
Andrew, Judy, and Thudd’s
next adventure—
ANDREW LOST
IN THE GARDEN!
Available April 22, 2003
I guess you should never count on a bug to solve your problems, thought Andrew Dubble as he flew above the garden on the back of a fly.
Bzzzzzzz…
The fly wings behind him buzzed like a noisy engine. The wind whooshed against his face.
Sitting next to Andrew was his thirteen-year-old cousin, Judy. She was clinging to a hair behind one of the fly’s huge black eyes. Andrew’s little silver robot, Thudd, was hanging tight to the edge of Andrew’s shirt pocket.
A few minutes ago, they’d almost become part of an afternoon snack for Judy’s neighbor Mrs. Scuttle. Now they were zooming above Mrs. Scuttle’s garden.
Kraaaack!
Mrs. Scuttle’s screen door slammed.
“Disgusting fly!” yelled Mrs. Scuttle. She ran after them waving a yellow fly swatter. “I’ll get you!”
Below them, Andrew and Judy could see a brick path. It led from Mrs. Scuttle’s kitchen door to a cement patio with a picnic table.
All around the path was Mrs. Scuttle’s garden. Purple daisies and pink lilies waved in the breeze. Rosebushes grew next to a white fence that separated Mrs. Scuttle’s yard from Judy’s.
“Look!” said Judy, pointing to her yard. “I can see your stupid Atom Sucker!”
The Atom Sucker was Andrew’s latest invention. It had shrunk them so small they could take a hike on the head of a pin!
Andrew and Judy felt a gust of wind as Mrs. Scuttle’s fly swatter swished by them. The fly flew in dizzy circles to get away.
Floating through the air were things that looked like spiky Ping-Pong balls. Some of them got stuck in Judy’s long, frizzy hair.
meep … “Pollen!” squeaked Thudd. “From flowers! Make baby plants!”
“Oh, great!” said Judy, trying to pull the sticky things out of her hair. “I’m allergic to pollen! Ah … ah … ahhhhh … chooof!”
The fly swatter was right above them when Mrs. Scuttle let out a scream.
“Harley, noooo!”
Harley was Mrs. Scuttle’s basset hound. He was standing next to the white fence. He was raising his leg!
Suddenly Andrew felt his stomach fluttering up to his mouth. The fly was going into a dive! The wind rushed against his face so hard hold them on to the fly. The Drastic Elastic was another one of Andrew’s inventions.
“Don’t tangle the Drastic Elastic,” said Andrew. “We might need it later.”
Judy finished unwrapping herself and handed the long loops of Drastic Elastic to Andrew. He snapped it like a yo-yo. The Drastic Elastic shrunk drastically. It was only as long as one of Andrew’s fingers!
Andrew tucked the Drastic Elastic into the secret pocket under his shirt collar. He zipped the pocket closed.
“I’m out of here!” said Judy, sliding down from behind the fly’s eye. Andrew followed her. Since they were as light as dust, they floated gently down.
Suddenly a scream rattled Andrew’s ears.
“Cheese Louise!” Judy hollered. “This is more disgusting than when we were flushed down the toilet!” he could hardly keep his eyes open. The garden turned into a green blur.
Andrew and Judy almost flew off the fly as it landed in the dirt. Their noses filled with strange moldy smells. On one side of the fly was a huge leaf bristling with hairs. On the other side was the brick path.
The fly crept along the ground. It stopped in front of a pile of shiny black goo and unrolled a fat hose from below its eyes. It dipped the hose into the goo.
meep … “Fly eating!” said Thudd.
“What’s it eating?” asked Judy.
meep … “Oody not want to know,” said Thudd.
“Yes I do”, said Judy.
meep … “Bug poop!” said Thudd.
“Eeeeew!” said Judy. “Let’s ditch this yucky bug!”
She started unwrapping the stretchy strands of Drastic Elastic that they’d used to
Text copyright © 2002 by J. C. Greenburg. Illustrations copyright © 2002 by Debbie Palen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.randomhouse.com/kids
www.AndrewLost.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greenburg, J. C. (Judith C.)
In the kitchen / by J. C. Greenburg; illustrated by Debbie Palen.
p. cm. — (Andrew Lost; 3)
“A stepping stone book.”
SUMMARY: After being shrunk by a shrinking machine, Andrew, his cousin Judy, and Thudd the robot encounter drain flies, a cockroach, and worse as they make their way through Mrs. Scuttle’s house toward safety.
eISBN: 978-0-307-53251-0
[1. Inventions—Fiction. 2. Size—Fiction. 3. Insects—Fiction.
4. Cousins—Fiction.] I. Palen, Debbie, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.G82785 Ip 2002 [Fic]—dc21 2002007902
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks and A STEPPING STONE BOOK and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc. ANDREW LOST is a trademark of J. C. Greenburg.
v3.0
J. C. Greenburg, In the Kitchen
