Kung Fooey
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Graham Salisbury
Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2011 by Jacqueline Rogers
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Salisbury, Graham.
Calvin Coconut : kung fooey / Graham Salisbury ; [illustrations by
Jacqueline Rogers]. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89796-2 [1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Automobile driving—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Family life—Hawaii—Fiction. 5. Hawaii—Fiction.] I. Rogers, Jacqueline, ill. II. Title.
III. Title: Kung fooey.
PZ7.S15225Cadk 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010029415
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
O
ne morning I slid off my top bunk and staggered over to the wall to measure myself. Maybe I’d grown overnight.
I grabbed a book and pencil, and made a mark.
“Aaack!”
My sleepy dog, Streak, leaped off the
bottom bunk and ran around the room barking. What’s up? What’s up? What’s up?
“Aaaaaaaack!”
I screamed again.
I burst out of my room.
“Mom! Mom!” I shouted, stumbling into the kitchen from my bedroom in the garage. “Something’s wrong!”
Mom grabbed my shoulders. “Settle down, Calvin, settle down.” Her face was a frown of concern. “Now … what’s wrong?”
“I’m shrinking, Mom! For real! I measured myself and—”
“Shrinking.” It wasn’t a question. She raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, Mom, I’m getting
smaller
, not bigger.”
My six-year-old sister, Darci, sat frozen at the breakfast counter gaping at me, her spoon dripping milk into her cereal bowl. Stella, the tenth-grader who had come to live with us to help Mom, stood at the kitchen sink with her back to us. She didn’t care that I was shrinking to death. She didn’t even turn around.
Mom let go and brushed dog hair off my T-shirt. “What makes you think you’re shrinking, Calvin?”
“Well … I … I, uh …”
Calm down. Breathe.
I gulped. “I just measured myself on the wall in my room and I’m … I’m an inch shorter than I was last week. I’m not kidding, Mom, there’s something wrong with me … and … and …”
Maybe I was dying. Maybe my time was up.
I took a deep breath.
Mom tried really hard not to smile. “There must be some mistake, Cal. People don’t just go around getting smaller.”
Stella spurted out a laugh and staggered away from the sink.
Mom turned to look at her. “Stella,” she said, and left the word hanging—which was Mom’s way of hinting that laughing at a shrinking person wasn’t very nice.
Stella bent over, holding her stomach, laughing and laughing.
“Stop!” I said. “I’m … disappearing, and that’s not funny!”
Stella’s eyes were wet with tears. She pointed at me, trying to speak, but couldn’t. My shrinking problem was the funniest thing she’d ever heard in her entire life.
“Well, I am!” I said to her. “You’d be worried, too, if you were getting smaller!”
Mom studied Stella. “Stella, did you …?”
Stella tried to stop laughing but burst out again, even louder than before.
Mom cupped the side of my face with her hand. “I think Stella just got you, sweetie.”
“Huh?”
Stella ripped off a paper towel and dabbed at her eyes. Her shoulders bounced as she laughed. “Oh, oh, oh! This is just too
good.”