Bumper Book of Humphrey's Tiny Tales 2 Read online

  ‘Humphrey, a delightful, irresistible character, is big-hearted, observant and creative, and his experiences … range from comedic to touching.’ Booklist

  ‘This is simply good-good-good.’ Kirkus Reviews

  ‘Children fall for Humphrey, and you can’t beat him for feelgood life lessons.’ Sunday Times

  Title Page

  Welcome to My World

  My Great Big Birthday Bash!

  I’d like you to meet some of my friends

  1 BIRTHDAYS-BIRTHDAYS-BIRTHDAYS

  2 A SILLY-SILLY-SILLY Party

  3 A GREAT-GREAT-GREAT Escape

  4 A BIG-BIG-BIG Surprise

  My Treasure Hunt Trouble!

  I’d like you to meet some of my friends

  1 Secret Treasure

  2 The Trouble Begins

  3 The Hunt is On

  4 Mystery Solved

  My Playful Puppy Problem!

  I’d like you to meet some of my friends

  1 Pet Project

  2 I Go for a Spin

  3 The Great Dog Disaster

  4 The Playful Puppy Returns

  My Really Wheely Racing Day!

  I’d like you to meet some of my friends

  1 A Wheely Great Weekend

  2 ZOOM-ZOOM-ZOOM Around the Room

  3 Really Wheely and Red

  4 A Wheely Big Day

  Author biography

  Have you read all of Humphrey’s adventures?

  Copyright

  Hi! I’m Humphrey. I’m lucky to be the classroom hamster in Room 26 of Longfellow School. It’s a big job because I have to go home with a different student each weekend and try to help my friends. Luckily, my cage has a lock-that-doesn’t-lock, so I can get out and have BIG-BIG-BIG adventures!

  a frog, is the other classroom pet in Room 26. He makes a funny sound: BOING!

  is our teacher. She really understands her students – even me!

  has a loud voice and calls me Humphrey Dumpty.

  is always quick with an answer.

  loves to giggle – and so do I!

  is the caretaker Aldo’s nephew and a classmate of mine.

  has a hamster named Winky!

  LOVES-LOVES-LOVES to joke and have fun.

  I think you’ll like my other friends, too, such as Wait-For-The-Bell-Garth, Golden-Miranda, Sit-Still-Seth and Speak-Up-Sayeh.

  There are lots of exciting things that happen in Room 26 of Longfellow School.

  I see them all because I live there. I am the classroom hamster.

  But I think the best part of the day is when my friends come bursting through the door in the morning.

  ‘Hi, Humphrey Dumpty!’ A.J. always shouts.

  A.J. has a LOUD-LOUD-LOUD voice, so I call him Lower-Your-Voice-A.J.

  ‘Hi, A.J.!’ I squeak back.

  Garth is usually with A.J. because they’re best friends.

  I call him Wait-For-The-Bell-Garth because he’s always out of the door first at the end of the school day.

  Then one morning, I-Heard-That-Kirk-Chen came into our classroom and said, ‘Happy birthday to me!’

  ‘It’s not your birthday, Kirk,’ Mandy said.

  Mandy Payne is a nice girl but she does like to complain.

  I call her Don’t-Complain-Mandy-Payne.

  ‘It’s almost my birthday,’ Kirk said. ‘It will be on Friday.’

  Mandy looked up at the row of cupcakes above the chalkboard. She shook her head.

  Sometimes when I look at those cupcakes, my tail twitches and my whiskers wiggle.

  They look so YUMMY-YUMMY-YUMMY!

  The problem is they’re not real cupcakes.

  They’re just pictures of cupcakes with candles on top.

  Each one has a name and a date.

  The cupcakes help us remember when a classmate has a birthday.

  One thing I’ve learned from humans – birthdays are unsqueakably important!

  ‘No, it’s not!’ I heard Mandy insist loudly.

  Our teacher, Mrs Brisbane, asked, ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Kirk says it’s his birthday on Friday, but it’s not.’ Mandy pointed to the cupcakes. ‘See? His birthday is on Saturday.’

  Mrs Brisbane nodded. ‘Yes. But since we don’t have school on Saturday, we’re celebrating Kirk’s birthday on Friday.’

  ‘Fine,’ Mandy said. ‘But he shouldn’t say it’s his birthday when it’s not.’

  ‘Please Don’t-Complain-Mandy-Payne,’ Mrs Brisbane said.

  ‘Hey, Mandy, I’ve got a joke for you,’ Kirk said.

  He loves to tell jokes and I think he wanted to make Mandy smile.

  ‘What do you give a 900-pound gorilla for his birthday?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered.

  ‘Anything he wants!’ Kirk said, howling with laughter.

  Some of my other friends laughed, too, like Stop-Giggling-Gail, who is always laughing.

  ‘Anything he wants!’ Repeat-It-Please-Richie said.

  Richie, A.J. and Garth beat their chests and made grunting sounds.

  I think they were pretending to be gorillas.

  Just then, the bell rang.

  School was starting and my friends all sat down.

  After Mrs Brisbane took the register, Kirk raised his hand.

  ‘Mrs Brisbane, am I going to be able to take Humphrey home for the weekend like you said?’ he asked.

  I live in Room 26, but I’m LUCKY-LUCKY-LUCKY that I get to go home with my friends on weekends.

  Our teacher nodded. ‘Yes, Kirk.’

  ‘Good,’ Kirk said. ‘He’ll be there for my birthday hsab. Everyone in class is invited.’

  Hsab? What was that strange word?

  The way he said it sounded like ‘huh-sab’.

  Mrs Brisbane looked puzzled.

  ‘I’m glad everyone is invited,’ she said. ‘But I’ve never heard of a hsab before. What does it mean?’

  ‘I can’t tell you!’ Kirk grinned broadly. ‘H-S-A-B. You have to work it out for yourselves. That’s part of the fun.’

  Mrs Brisbane wrote the strange word on the board in big letters:

  ‘Maybe if we look at the word, it will help,’ she said.

  Then she began teaching the class about numbers.

  She said something about Jonny having twelve apples and Suzy taking away eight.

  I don’t know Suzy, but I hope she asked Jonny before she took away his apples!

  I tried to pay attention to what Mrs Brisbane was saying, but my mind kept wandering to the word on the board.

  Hsab. What on earth could it mean?

  *

  Later that night, I asked the other classroom pet, Og the frog, if he’d worked it out.

  Og lives in a tank next to my cage on a table by the window.

  ‘BOING-BOING-BOING!’ he replied.

  He makes a funny sound, but he’s really very nice for a frog.

  ‘Me neither,’ I said.

  I took out the little notebook and pencil that I keep hidden behind the mirror in my cage.

  I wrote down the word so I could take a closer look.

  H-S-A-B.

  I turned the notebook upside down.

  I turned it sideways.

  I even turned the notebook backwards.

  I couldn’t see the word any more.

  But I could see the mirror.

  In the mirror, everything looks backwards, including words.

  This word looked STRANGE-STRANGE-STRANGE.

  I saw a backwards B, an A, a backwards S and an H.

  If the backwards letters were forwards, the word would be B-A-S-H!

  A bash! A bash is like
a great, big wonderful party.

  So Kirk was having a birthday bash!

  But why did he write the word backwards?

  Humans are nice, but sometimes they do very strange things.

  *

  I wasn’t the only one in Room 26 who had worked out that hsab was bash spelled backwards.

  ‘It’s a birthday bash,’ A.J. shouted as he came into class the next morning. ‘I got the invitation and my mum held it up to the mirror. Some of the letters were backwards, but she worked it out.’

  A.J.’s mum must be SMART-SMART-SMART (like me).

  Mrs Brisbane asked Kirk to explain why he had written the word backwards.

  ‘It’s a backwards party,’ he said. ‘Everything will be backwards. Hands up if you’re coming.’

  Every hand in the room shot up.

  My paw went up, too.

  ‘It sounds like a very interesting party,’ Mrs Brisbane said.

  ‘Mrs Brisbane?’ Mandy said. ‘I’ve been looking at the birthday cupcakes and some names are missing.’

  Our teacher looked up at the row of cupcakes.

  ‘Yours isn’t up there,’ Mandy continued. ‘Or Humphrey’s.’

  I scrambled up to the tippy-top of my cage to see if she was right.

  Sure enough, Mrs Brisbane’s name wasn’t there and neither was mine.

  Another name was also missing.

  ‘What about Og?’ I squeaked at the top of my tiny lungs.

  ‘Ooh, Og’s missing, too,’ Raise-Your-Hand-Heidi said.

  As usual, she forgot to raise her hand.

  When I squeak, humans can’t understand me, so I was glad that Heidi had also noticed that Og’s name was missing.

  ‘I don’t need everyone to remember my birthday,’ Mrs Brisbane said. ‘Every day I’m here in Room 26 is a special day for me.’

  My friends still wanted to know about Og and me.

  ‘The problem is, I don’t know when they were born,’ Mrs Brisbane said.

  I suddenly felt SAD-SAD-SAD.

  If no one knew when I was born, I could never have a birthday!

  Heidi said, ‘Frogs aren’t born. They’re hatched!’

  ‘That’s right,’ Mrs Brisbane said. ‘Frogs start out as eggs.’

  Og splashed around a little in his tank.

  I felt SAD-SAD-SAD for him, too.

  He could never have a birthday.

  And though he could have a hatch-day, nobody knew when it was.

  On Friday, we celebrated Kirk’s birthday in class.

  First, he got to wear the paper birthday crown all day.

  Next, he got to pick a gift from Mrs Brisbane’s birthday grab bag.

  She asked him to close his eyes and reach inside.

  The birthday surprise he pulled out was a big sheet of silly stickers.

  I was glad it was something funny, since Kirk likes to joke around.

  Then we all sang him a birthday song.

  I happily squeaked along and I even heard a few BOING-BOINGS coming from Og.

  At the end of the day, Kirk’s mum came to pick us up.

  ‘Bye, Og,’ I squeaked. ‘I’ll tell you all about the bash on Monday.’

  Og doesn’t leave Room 26 at the weekends, because he can go a few days without being fed.

  I didn’t like leaving him behind.

  He didn’t have his own hatch-day and he wasn’t going to Kirk’s birthday bash.

  I guess it’s not easy being a frog.

  The next day, when it was time for the party, Kirk set me on a big table near the front door so I could see everything.

  ‘Just watch, Humphrey,’ he said. ‘The fun is about to begin.’

  And something funny had already begun because Kirk had his shirt on back to front so the buttons went down his back!

  Most of his clothes were on back to front, except his shoes.

  I think it would be hard for a human to walk in back-to-front shoes.

  The doorbell rang and Kirk ran to open it.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said as Richie entered.

  Kirk turned Richie around and said, ‘Not like that! You have to come in backwards.’

  So Richie came through the door again, walking backwards.

  He wasn’t just walking backwards.

  He was also wearing his clothes inside out!

  Because it was a backwards party, all my friends from Room 26 arrived wearing their clothes back to front or inside out.

  Everyone loved the birthday balloons, which were attached to the floor instead of the ceiling.

  And they laughed at the music, which sounded STRANGE-STRANGE-STRANGE because it was playing backwards.

  Then my friends had a relay race in the garden.

  It was unsqueakably funny to see them running backwards.

  My friends laughed, too.

  One nice thing about humans is that they can laugh at themselves.

  At last, it was time to eat.

  Kirk moved my cage to a little table near the big table where all my friends were gathered.

  Kirk’s mum brought in the birthday cake.

  On top, were bright red icing letters: KRIK, YADHTRIB YPPAH.

  I had a pretty good idea that those letters spelled out: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KIRK – only backwards!

  Singing the birthday song backwards wasn’t easy but Kirk’s dad had printed out the words so everyone could take part.

  Then, instead of blowing out his birthday candles, Kirk helped his mum light them.

  ‘Make a wish,’ Kirk’s mum said.

  Kirk closed his eyes and opened them again.

  Then he blew out the candles.

  But the funny thing was, they lit right up again!

  Kirk tried to blow them out again and again, but they kept relighting because they were trick candles.

  ‘Backwards candles,’ Kirk said. ‘Funny!’

  Finally, Kirk’s dad put them out.

  Then, Kirk’s mum served ice cream.

  ‘Hey, what did the ice cream say to the cake?’ Kirk asked.

  No one answered, so Kirk said, ‘What’s eating you?’

  I laughed and laughed – it was such a funny joke!

  *

  Kirk’s friends gave him presents wrapped in inside-out paper with bows tied on the bottom instead of the top.

  He got a toy helicopter, some rocks for his rock collection, a board game and a joke book.

  I think the joke book was his favourite present because he started reading it right away.

  ‘Hey, what does a cat eat for his birthday?’ he asked. ‘Mice cream and cake!’

  Everybody laughed except me.

  After all, mice and hamsters are a lot alike.

  I was SO-SO-SO embarrassed that I didn’t have a present for Kirk.

  But then I had an idea.

  I may not have had a present, but at least I could add something to the party.

  I decided to put on a show.

  First, I started spinning on my wheel.

  The sound got Richie’s attention.

  ‘Hey, look at Humphrey go!’ he said.

  Soon, all my friends were gathered around my cage, watching.

  I hopped off my wheel and climbed up the big tree branch in my cage, all the way to the top.

  ‘Oooh,’ my friends said.

  Then I grabbed on to the top bars and hung on tightly.

  Slowly and carefully, I made my way across the top of the cage.

  ‘Ahhh!’ my friends said.

  To finish off the act, I made a daring jump straight down and landed in my bedding.

  I hadn’t planned to do a double-flip, but when I did, my friends all clapped.

  When it was time for the guests to leave, everyone said ‘Hello,’ which made me giggle.

  ‘Hello!’ I squeaked loudly.

  After everyone had gone home, Kirk said, ‘Thank you, Humphrey, for helping make my party turn out so well!’

  ‘Thanks for inviting me,’ I squeaked back.

&nbs
p; I don’t think I’d ever had so much fun in my life.

  I only wished Og could have been there, too.

  *

  When I got back to Room 26 on Monday morning, I was about to tell my froggy friend about the backwards bash when I heard Garth say, ‘Listen up, everybody.’

  He looked over at my cage.

  Then he glanced at the door, where Mrs Brisbane was talking to the teacher across the hall.

  ‘I have a great idea. Want to hear it?’ Garth asked in a loud whisper.

  ‘Yes!’ the other students yelled.

  ‘YES-YES-YES!’ I squeaked.

  ‘Sssh,’ he said. ‘It’s a secret. Listen up.’

  Garth turned to Richie and whispered something in his ear.

  All I could hear were the words ‘surprise’ and ‘Thursday’.

  I like surprises and wanted to hear more.

  ‘Could you squeak up just a little?’ I asked.

  Richie turned to Miranda and whispered in her ear.

  I perked up my tiny pink ears but all I could hear was the word ‘present’.

  Miranda smiled. ‘Oooh, I have an idea!’

  ‘Sssh,’ the other children told her.

  ‘Sorry,’ Miranda said.

  Then Miranda turned to Gail and whispered in her ear.

  Gail giggled, then whispered in A.J.’s ear.

  This time, I heard the word ‘birthday’.