My brother, Ledger, doesn’t know I’m writing this, ‘cause if he did, he’d probably stop me.
It’s not that he’s humble or anything (that’s for sure!), it’s just that he gets so embarrassed. Like he always got embarrassed by our dad’s weird inventions, and then because our dad’s bookstore Walden Pondering was going under so he almost had to declare bankruptcy. But I think that’s dumb. We did save the bookstore after all. Well, actually, Ledger did most of the saving.
It all started when our Granddad Dexter showed up, all excited to tell us about his Sunsoakers, these plants he was developing that grow batteries.
See, he wanted to do something really useful to fight global warming (and make a billion dollars!), but some bad guys blew up his lab and almost killed him.
So he decided to hide out at Camp Eureka (that’s an inventor’s camp for super-gifted kids), pretending to be a camp counselor while he finished his project in secret. And he offered to take us with him for the summer. (Yay!)
But first we had to get there. That was when Granddad surprised us with the Scamper. It’s kind of like a camper, but it also transforms into a plane, a boat and a submarine. (He says it’s a Camper that Soars, Sails and Submerges. That’s his kind of old-person humor, I think.)
Anyway, we drove, flew, boated and submarined our way to Inspiration Falls, on Consternation Lake, but the bad guys caught up with us and we got stranded underwater. By good luck, Granddad had this awesome umbrella that converts into a diving bell, a rowboat, a tent, a zip-line cradle and a flying drone, and I can tell you, it got us out of some pretty tight spots on our way through the woods to the camp.
Halfway there, we stumbled across this hidden village of little people. As far as I could figure out, they built the village really tiny so they could have houses and furniture and stuff that were all their own little size. It was cute, but hard for Granddad to find a decent chair to sit in, or a bed where he didn’t have to dangle his feet off the end.
I guess the bad guys caught up with us during the night, because the next morning, Granddad was gone. I freaked.
We looked for him all day, but no luck. That’s when a tall girl in the village named Piper offerred to drive us in a Jeep to Camp Eureka to get help. On the way we picked up a hitchhiker–a four-legged robot with a display screen for a head. I named him Seymour.
Lucky thing, too, because he saved my life after I was attacked by a huge grizzly who didn’t seem to like me very much.
Anyway, we finally made it to camp, but the stupid camp director wouldn’t let us join the search until we proved ourselves by joining two contests: the Weird and Wacky Water War and the Pretty Nerdy Baby Buggy Derby.
Look, I don’t want to give it all away and besides, there’s this book that tells everything. It’s called Ledger Demain and the Awesome Umbrella. If you’d like to read a synopsis and some sample text, just click here.
Don’t tell Ledger, though!
Bye!
Savoir Faire Demain