Text copyright © 2005 by Freddy and the French Fries, Ltd. Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Rudy Baldacci All rights reserved. Little, Brown and Company Hachette Book Group USA 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Visit our Web site at HachetteBookGroupUSA.com First eBook Edition: July 2008 The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Summary: While competing with a rival restaurant for the winning float in the Founder's Day parade, nine-year-old Freddy Funkhouser constructs a batch of animated French fries in his secret laboratory that come to life after receiving an enormous jolt of electricity. ISBN: 978-0-316-03393-0 The illustrations for this book were done in pen and ink on illustration board. Contents CHAPTER 1: FREDDY FUNKHOUSER CHAPTER 2: THE FUNKHOUSER EXPERIMENT CHAPTER 3: THE JIGGY-WATTS CAPER CHAPTER 4: SIX FRIES IF YOU COUNT HEADS CHAPTER 5: THE FLIGHT OF THE FRIES CHAPTER 6: THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS KID CHAPTER 7: CURLY RUNS THE BASES CHAPTER 8: TOO MANY PIES CHAPTER 9: THE POOKESVILLE CHESS MATCH CHAPTER 10: ALL FALL DOWN CHAPTER 11: QUEEN NANCY THE NICEST OF NANTUCKET CHAPTER 12: THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM CHAPTER 13: FRENCH-FRIED MIRACLE CHAPTER 14: HOWIE KAPOWIE SPILLS THE BEANS CHAPTER 15: THE ATTACK OF THE SPANKER GANG CHAPTER 16: FRIES VS. GUYS CHAPTER 17: PURPULIS ENORMOSIS CHAPTER 18: THE SPANKERS STRIKE BACK CHAPTER 19: THE FLOAT THAT REALLY FLOATS CHAPTER 20: THE BURGER CASTLE’S A HIT CHAPTER 21: THE FINAL SHOWDOWN To Spencer and Collin, my two favorite Fries. CHAPTER FREDDY FUNKHOUSER FREDDY T. FUNKHOUSER stood at the door of the Burger Castle and scratched his ear, which was a little difficult since he was wearing a chicken costume. He rubbed his beak and practiced his clucking as he waited for customers. His father, Alfred Funkhouser, insisted that Freddy greet each customer that came into the Funkhouser family’s restaurant with a welcoming “cluck-cluck.” “Pow-pow-pow!” said Alfred Funkhouser as he rolled by on skates, dressed in his tomato costume, shooting seeds from the automatic seed shooters attached to his forearms. The seed shooter was one of Alfred’s many strange inventions. “Take cover, incoming. Ack-ack-ack!” cried out Alfred as he fired all over the place. “Better save the ammo for the paying customers, Dad,” Freddy said as he patiently picked the tiny seeds off his wings. “Right-O, Freddy. How many customers have we had today?” “That would be, like, zero,” said Freddy’s thirteen-year-old sister, Nancy, as she flounced by in her ketchup-bottle costume. An aspiring actress, the tall, skinny Nancy Funkhouser flounced dramatically everywhere, swishing her flaming red hair this way and that. She had a large trunk of costumes in her bedroom she had gotten from an old theater and dressed up in crazy outfits all the time. She constantly spouted dialogue from plays, movies, TV, and commercials. “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” cried out Nancy to an invisible audience. The five Guacamole brothers, who worked at the restaurant dressed as French fries, looked up, sniggered, and went back to their card playing and magazine reading. “Cluck-cluck,” replied Freddy, staring at his sister and tapping his beak with his left wing. “Cluck-cluck, here I am, O Nanny Boo-Boo. Herefore art I am.” Freddy and his Dad sometimes called her “Nanny Boo-Boo” because when he was very little, Freddy would run to his big sister when he got hurt and say, “Nanny, Boo-Boo.” Even though he was nine years old now, Freddy still called her that when he wanted to make her mad. He considered making his sister miserable one of the most important jobs he had, because she certainly tried to make his life miserable every chance she got. “Hmmpph,” she snorted. “You’ve ruined my concentration. I can’t possibly work under these conditions,” she complained. “You’re not working right now,” pointed out Freddy. “Duh. We don’t have any customers. They’re all over there cramming dead cows into their mouths.” Nancy pointed her bottle top across the street to the enormous and fancy burger restaurant owned by the Spanker family. Patty Cakes, which served everything from burgers to cakes, was far more than a restaurant. The place had its own Ferris wheel, roller coaster, splash rides, movie theater, video arcade, and lots more. Their competitor’s sign had a large plastic charcoal hamburger patty sitting on top of a pink cake. The patty and cake logo was on everything, from the staff uniforms to advertisements in the paper to the Patty Cakes blimp that glided all over town. The Spankers drove a big pink Cadillac that played the ditty: “Patty-cake, patty-cake, Spanker man, follow us, follow us to Spanker Land.” It made Freddy want to puke every time he heard it. “Beef — it’s what’s for dinner,” said Nancy dramatically, and then fell to the floor in a moving death scene before standing and taking a bow. “Thank you, thank you,” she murmured. “No, no encore, really, not another encore, my adoring fans. Fifteen is enough. Well, perhaps just one more.” Freddy could only shake his head. Of fifty million sisters he could have had, he got her. He said, “I’ve performed a rigorous calculation and concluded that the fat and sodium content of a number six deluxe special at Patty Cakes is equal to eating four fatted calves and five pounds of salt.” Freddy liked to use big words when he talked about scientific stuff. “Right-o, Freddy,” agreed his father. “I’ve made the same calculation. Not very healthy fare.” “But that’s why everyone goes there, Dad,” explained his daughter, “because it’s bad for you and grease tastes good.” She performed a little tap dance and squirted ketchup out of her costume’s head. “Good to the last drop,” she recited to her adoring fans. “It doesn’t taste half as good as Dad’s soybean and tofu burgers or