Adventure According to Humphrey Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1 - We Set Sail for the Library

  Chapter 2 - Sink or Swim

  Chapter 3 - Portrait of a Hamster

  Chapter 4 - A Golden Moment

  Chapter 5 - The Trip to Treasure Island

  Chapter 6 - Wright Is Wrong

  Chapter 7 - An Unpleasant Discovery

  Chapter 8 - Batten Down the Hatches

  Chapter 9 - Secrets, Secrets Everywhere

  Chapter 10 - Anchors Aweigh

  Chapter 11 - All at Sea

  Chapter 12 - Land Ho!

  Humphrey’s List of Ten Things You Should Know About Pirates

  For more Humphrey adventures, look for

  The World

  According to Humphrey

  Friendship

  According to Humphrey

  Trouble

  According to Humphrey

  Surprises

  According to Humphrey

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

  Published by The Penguin Group.

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3,

  Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.).

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.).

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd).

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi—110 017, India.

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd).

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,

  Johannesburg 2196, South Africa.

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Copyright © 2009 by Betty G. Birney.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.

  Birney, Betty G. Adventure according to Humphrey / Betty G. Birney. p. cm.

  Summary: Humphrey the classroom hamster has adventures going to the library, learning

  about the ocean, and sailing across a pond on a sailboat. [1. Hamsters—Fiction.

  2. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.B5229Ad 2009 [Fic]—dc22 2008002347

  eISBN : 978-1-440-69934-4

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  With unsqueakable gratitude,

  to my adventurous agent, Nancy Gallt

  1

  We Set Sail for the Library

  Guess what I did this weekend!” Heidi Hopper blurted out one sunny Monday morning.

  As usual, my friends in Room 26 of Longfellow School had come back to class with wonderful stories about what they’d done over the weekend.

  “Raise-Your-Hand-Heidi, please,” said Mrs. Brisbane. Heidi had been better about speaking out of turn lately, but she still slipped up once in a while. After all, she’s only human.

  When Heidi raised her hand, Mrs. Brisbane asked, “Okay, what did you do this weekend?”

  “We went on a hike to a cave and waded through an underground stream,” Heidi proudly explained.

  I was so amazed, I almost fell off my wheel. (That’s what happens when you stop spinning too quickly.) A cave and an underground stream? Now that was an adventure!

  “Sounds like quite an adventure,” Mrs. Brisbane agreed. Then she noticed all the other hands waving in the air. “It looks as if a lot of you had adventures.”

  Oh, yes, they had! Lower-Your-Voice-A.J. and Wait-for-the-Bell-Garth had gone bicycling. Miranda Golden (whom I think of as Golden-Miranda because she’s an almost perfect human) visited the zoo, where many large and scary animals live. Sit-Still-Seth had gone horseback riding.

  “I had Humphrey at my house,” I-Heard-That-Kirk Chen proudly announced. “We had an amazing time. Right, Richie?”

  “What?” asked Repeat-It-Please-Richie Rinaldi.

  “With Humphrey. At my house,” Kirk repeated.

  “Yes!” Richie reached across the aisle and high-fived Kirk.

  It was true. I’d had a great weekend at Kirk’s. I got to watch TV and listen to people talk. Richie came over, too, but whenever he and Kirk did something FUN-FUN-FUN, like going outside to fly a kite or toss a ball around, they left me behind. I know that small furry creatures don’t usually do things like that, but as a classroom hamster who goes home with a different student each weekend, I must admit I sometimes feel a little left out. After all, I’m always ready to help my friends (or even my teacher or principal) solve a problem. It would be nice if they let me share in their adventures, too.

  Don’t get me wrong. People have been very nice to me. But ever since the day I left Pet-O-Rama and came to Room 26, I’ve been trying to understand human behavior. It’s been interesting . . . but it hasn’t been easy.

  I’m luckier than Og the Frog, who is the other classroom pet. He doesn’t need to be fed as often as I do and usually spends weekends alone in Room 26. He doesn’t seem to mind, but then, it’s not easy to understand frog behavior, either.

  While I was thinking about my friends’ adventures, I lost track of what was happening in class for a moment. Mrs. Brisbane was giving us our new vocabulary words for the week and, oh, what words they were! Beautiful words, like nautical, treasure, and squall, which Mrs. Brisbane said was a violent gust of wind. They were the best vocabulary words I’d heard since I started school back in September, and I quickly jotted them down in the tiny notebook I keep hidden behind the mirror in my cage.

  Ms. Mac, the substitute teacher who first brought me to Room 26, gave me the notebook before she moved to far-off Brazil. No one else knew I had it. No one knew that I had learned to read and write, either.

  My fellow classmates seemed to enjoy the vocabulary words, too. Kirk, the class clown, shouted out, “Squall! Squall!” Then he took a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks and loudly blew out all the air like a big gust of wind. Stop-Giggling-Gail Morgenstern giggled, but just about everything made her laugh.

  The words reminded me of a pirate movie we watched at Kirk’s house. Some of the pirates were SCARY-SCARY-SCARY, but it was exciting to see the big ships with their sails flying in the wind. How I’d love to feel the sea breeze ruffling through my fur! And to hear the pirates saying things like, “Avast, matey,” and, “Land ho!” I’m not sure what those things mean, but they sound thrilling!

  To top it all off, the pirates were fighting with other pirates over buried treasure. I sometimes hide food to save for the future, but the pirates hid gold and silver and shiny jewels. Buried treasure sounds like the most wonderful thing on earth!

  I do manage to have adventures of my own, especially when I escape from my cage. I can easily do that because it has a lock-that-doesn’t-lock. It looks firmly closed, but I can jiggle it open, get out of my cage to help my friends and return without anyone knowing it. Most of my exploits have been in houses, apartments or in Room 26, but now that I’d been around humans for a while, I longed for bigger adventures.

  Lower-Your-Voice-A.J. must have read my mind. (How does he do that?)

  “Mrs. Brisbane, can we put Humphrey in his hamster ball?” he yelled out.

  “A.J., did I call on you?” Mrs. Brisbane asked.

  “Sorry,” said A.J., lowering his voice. “But may we, please?”


  Our teacher glanced over at my cage. “I guess he would like a break from his cage,” she said. Maybe she could read my mind, too.

  Although I hadn’t had my hamster ball for long, I loved rolling up and down the aisles of Room 26. You can learn a lot from studying the floor of a classroom. You can find out who is messy (Richie, Mandy) or who is twitchy (Seth, Art). You can even find out who is growing the fastest by seeing whose jeans are a little short (Garth, Sayeh).

  That day, I rolled up and down the aisles of Room 26 at a relaxing pace. The good thing is, I can go where I want to unless Mrs. Brisbane stops me. The bad thing is, it’s a little hard to hear inside the ball, especially when I’m daydreaming about adventures. Especially adventures on a boat, in the water, on the—

  “Ocean,” Mrs. Brisbane said, and I heard her quite clearly.

  “In the library,” she added.

  Maybe I didn’t hear her clearly after all. I knew that oceans were VERY-VERY-VERY large bodies of water. And I knew that the library was a place where my friends went to get books. In truth, I’d never seen an ocean or a library, even though there was one right down the hall. A library, that is. (There was no ocean at Longfellow School, at least as far as I knew.)

  As I rolled up the aisle to hear better, I saw Mrs. Brisbane look at her watch. There’s a big clock on the wall, but Mrs. Brisbane still checked her watch a lot.

  “It’s time to go right now,” she announced.

  I wasn’t sure whether she was going to the ocean or to the library or maybe both places, but I was sure that I wanted to go, too.

  “Mr. Fish will be waiting,” she added.

  Mr. Fish? She must have been talking about the ocean. I speeded up my hamster ball, spinning my way right up to Mrs. Brisbane’s feet.

  “Me too! Me too!” I squeaked.

  Mrs. Brisbane looked down at me. Because my hamster ball is yellow, she looked all yellow, too. Everyone did.

  “Not you, Humphrey,” she told me. “You’ll have to go back to your cage.”

  There was a loud groan from my classmates. I think every single one of them groaned.

  “We can’t take Humphrey to the library,” Mrs. Brisbane insisted. “What would he do?”

  Miranda—dear Golden-Miranda—raised her hand and the teacher called on her.

  “He wouldn’t hurt anything,” she said. “He could stay in his hamster ball.”

  Wait-for-the-Bell-Garth Tugwell spoke up, too. “He’s never been to the library before.”

  “Very well,” said Mrs. Brisbane. “Just keep an eye on him.”

  And that was it! As Garth picked up my hamster ball, I realized that Og would be left behind. Since he spends a lot of time in water, he’d probably enjoy meeting someone called Mr. Fish, too.

  “Sorry you can’t come, Og!” I squeaked.

  I wasn’t sure if he could hear me through the hamster ball. Also, Og doesn’t have any ears that I can see, although he seems to hear just fine.

  My friends lined up and marched down the hall toward the library.

  “You have to be quiet in the library, Humphrey Dumpty,” A.J. bellowed. “And you can’t check out books without a card.”

  I was too busy trying to stay upright to figure out what kind of card I needed. I know Garth tried to hold the ball steady, but it was a bumpy trip. Even if I felt a little queasy and uneasy, it was well worth the trouble because the library was a HUGE-HUGE-HUGE room lined with colorful shelves.

  I love books, especially the ones that Mrs. Brisbane reads to us. Although she can be serious as a teacher, when she reads, she becomes a new person with all kinds of different voices that make my whiskers wiggle and my fur stand on end!

  “Sorry we’re late, Mr. Fish,” she said. At least I think that’s what she said. “We brought along another member of our class,” she added. “Humphrey.”

  Suddenly, I saw a large pair of round eyes surrounded by a large pair of round glasses peering down at me. “So this is the famous Humphrey!” Mr. Fish exclaimed. “Welcome to the library.”

  “THANKS-THANKS-THANKS,” I replied politely, although I know all he heard was SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK.

  “I’m Mr. Fitch, the librarian,” he continued.

  So it was Fitch, not Fish. But he looked a little bit like a fish with his big round eyes and his large round mouth. Then there was that shirt with the black-and-white stripes and all that blue water behind him. What was all that blue water doing in the library? Was this the ocean after all?

  “Humphrey, look at all the fishies!” Lower-Your-Voice-A. J. shouted in his loudest voice. Garth held my hamster ball up, and when I stopped swaying from side to side, I saw lots and lots of blue water filled with lots and lots of fish!

  “It’s a, uh, naquarium,” A.J. explained.

  “An aquarium,” Mr. Fitch corrected him in a kind voice. “A home for fish.”

  Oh, yes, it was quite a home for fish. There were orange fish, silvery fish, fish with black-and-white stripes like Mr. Fitch’s shirt, big fish, little fish and more! There was even a tiny boat lying at the bottom of the aquarium, which started me wondering just whose boat it was and what had happened to the owner. The ship was small—about the right size for a hamster—but it didn’t look very seaworthy. What had happened to make it sink? Was it an accident, bad weather (not too likely in the library) or . . . pirates?

  “What do you think, Humphrey?” Mr. Fitch asked.

  “Eek!” I squeaked. It just slipped out.

  Actually, I was thinking that I’d like to be out of the hamster ball so I could see better. But I was lucky to be in the library at all, so it wouldn’t be polite to complain.

  “Hey, Humphrey!” Kirk leaned down close to the ball. “Why did the fish go the library?”

  I knew it was one of Kirk’s jokes, but I didn’t have an answer, so I just squeaked politely.

  “To find some bookworms!” Kirk gleefully answered.

  “Oh,” I squeaked, even though I wasn’t sure that books had worms in them unless they were books about worms.

  “Okay, folks, gather around,” Mr. Fitch told my classmates. “We have a lot to do today.”

  As my friends sat on the floor, Garth gently set me down near him so I could start rolling my way around the room.

  That’s when I got a better look at something even more amazing than the fish. Books! Red, blue, green, yellow, pink and purple books. Big, thick books and tall, thin books. Shelves of books all the way to the ceiling. Racks and stacks of books everywhere else. I didn’t know there were so many books in the whole wide world, yet here they all were in one big room in Longfellow School. I tried to make a sudden stop as one book caught my attention because of the pirate on the cover. And the pirate flag. It was hard to make out the title from behind the yellow plastic. Jolly Roger’s Guide . . .

  “Attention, please!” Mrs. Brisbane said in her most attention-getting teacher’s voice.

  I rolled a little closer so I could hear what she was saying.

  “A test,” she said.

  Oh, my, we were going to take a test and I didn’t have my little notebook and pencil with me. No one had even mentioned a test before we came to the library.

  I still couldn’t hear very well, but I did hear Mr. Fitch say, “What floats?”

  This didn’t sound like a spelling test or math quiz. I rolled to the front of the group, staring up at the aquarium for a closer look.

  “Yes, Mandy?” Mr. Fitch said. I couldn’t see her, but she must have raised her hand.

  “Mr. Fitch, I think we should take Humphrey out of the hamster ball so he can have some fresh air.”

  My, what a nice girl Mandy was! I used to think her name was Don’t-Complain-Mandy Payne, but she hardly ever complained anymore.

  “That’s a good idea,” Mrs. Brisbane said.

  “I was thinking about what my hamster would like,” Mandy replied with pride in her voice. She did have a very fine hamster, thanks to me. And if I was let out of my ball, I
could roam freely and get a closer look at all those beautiful books.

  “Here,” Mr. Fitch said as Kirk opened the ball. “Put him in this.”

  “This” turned out to be a little square on his desk surrounded by books. Because the desk was lower than the aquarium, I had a good view of what Mr. Fitch was doing.

  “Class, Mr. Fitch is going to let us use his tank to do some tests to figure out what floats and what doesn’t—and why,” Mrs. Brisbane explained.

  I stood up on my hind legs to get a better look. Although the world wasn’t yellow anymore, I had absolutely no idea what floats. But I knew something that didn’t: that little hamster-sized boat at the bottom of the tank.

  If ye be seeking adventure, mateys, the only place to look be the high seas!

  From JOLLY ROGER’S GUIDE TO LIFE,

  by I.C. Waters

  2

  Sink or Swim

  Here is what I learned:• A wood block is heavier than a plastic bottle cap. Which one floats? Both!

  • A piece of aluminum foil isn’t nearly as heavy as a block of wood. But when you roll it up into a ball, it drops to the bottom of the water like a small sunken ship.

  • A ball of clay sinks like a great big shipwreck.

  • When you spread the foil out in the shape of a little boat, it floats! (Though I’m not sure I’d try sailing in it.)

  • By golly, when you spread the clay out into a little boat, it floats, too!

  I saw it all with my own little hamster eyes, but when Mrs. Brisbane asked why the foil and clay boats floated when the balls didn’t, I was squeakless. So were my friends.

  “Come on, try a guess, then,” Mr. Fitch said in an encouraging voice.

  “What was the question again?” asked Pay-Attention-Art Patel.

  “Why did the foil and clay boats float, but the balls didn’t?” Mrs. Brisbane patiently repeated.

  Art shrugged.