eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Chuck and Dakota win a chance to visit the studio of reclusive artist and storyteller Norman Redmane, the creator of IncrediBull, a cowmic book about a flying supercow from beyond the moon. But during the calves' visit, Norman gets bonked on the head…HARD. When he comes to, bad news: he thinks he IS IncrediBull. Worse news: he thinks Dakota is his superstrong sidekick, Fantasti-Calf.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780807587157 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Whitman, Albert & Company |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2016 |
| Series: | Welcome to Bermooda! , #4 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
| Age Range: | 7 - 10 Years |
About the Author
Mike Litwin is a children's book author and the award-winning illustrator of New York Times bestsellers My Name is Not Isabella, My Name Is Not Alexander, and Isabella: Girl on the Go. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and four children.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
An IncrediBull Guess
The world can be full of heroes, even in a peaceful paradise like Bermooda. Sometimes a hero is just a simple creature with a good heart. Sometimes a hero is just someone who shows up in the right place at the right time. And sometimes the hero has no idea who they are or what they are doing.
Chuck and Dakota Porter wouldn't really call themselves heroes. Chuck was just a little calf with a big thirst for excitement. Dakota was just a hu'man boy who wanted a quiet life with his adopted new family. Together, they always seemed to find adventure on this tiny tropical island, no matter how calm things appeared to be on the surface. Today, however, Chuck and Dakota were sitting in one place on Bermooda that was not calm: Leatherneck's Grill.
Leatherneck was a big hulk of a bull with a jolly voice, a gold ring in his nose, and a bold red shirt that was big enough to use as a blanket. His outdoor café sat at the edge of Bermooda Village, and it was always a popular place for calves to feast on grilled pineapple or slurp down fresh mango juice. But today his place was even busier than usual, with excited calves swarming around his bamboo counter like hungry ants on a drop of tropical cane sugar. Today, at exactly noon, Leatherneck would announce the winner of his IncrediBull Guessing Contest.
Leatherneck had started the contest to sell his new drink, the Avocadoberry Smoothie Punch. At the beginning of the month, he had filled a big jar with avocado seeds and placed it on the counter. Any time someone bought one of his new smoothies, they were allowed to guess how many seeds were in the jar by writing down their number on a big yellow ticket and putting it in a box. At the end of the month, whoever had the closest guess would win the chance to meet Norman Redmane — the creator of every calf's favorite superhero, IncrediBull.
Chuck and Dakota Porter sat at the table closest to the guessing jar. Chuck was a huge fan of IncrediBull, and a chance to meet the artist would be like a dream come true. He had tried all kinds of ideas to find the closest guess. He had used math equations. He had weighed the jar. He had even surveyed other cows to see how many seeds they thought were in there. Today he was busily crumbling up leaves into little balls the same size as avocado seeds and dropping them into a wicker basket about the same size as the guessing jar. His tail twitched as he counted each ball, convinced this was one of his best ideas ever.
"Do you know how many smoothie punches you've bought this month?" Dakota asked as he sipped on Chuck's drink. Chuck wanted to put as many tickets as he could in the box, so he had bought Avocadoberry Smoothie Punches all month long.
"Nope," Chuck said without taking his eyes off his work. "I lost count."
"Over six dozen!" Dakota said, answering his own question.
Chuck paid little attention to Dakota. Noon was coming fast, and he wasn't finished counting all his fake avocado seeds yet.
"Is it really worth all this effort?" Dakota asked between slurps.
Chuck's tail stopped twitching. He froze mid-count and looked up. "Of course it's worth it!" he said. "Norman Redmane isn't just any artist. He's the creator of IncrediBull!" He pointed to the picture behind Leatherneck's guessing jar. It was a drawing of a red bull in a bright yellow superhero costume. He wore a masked hood with a long cape, and his chest sported a logo in the shape of a cow head with a lightning bolt in it. The fiery supercow was swinging a fisted hoof into the air, and from his mouth came a word bubble that read: "Leatherneck's Smooooothies give me a PUNCH!"
"Yeah, I know." Dakota sighed. "I just don't see the big deal with IncrediBull. I mean, look at that ridiculous costume! It doesn't exactly look like something you'd find on Bermooda."
"Neither do you," Chuck reminded Dakota. "And his costume isn't any more ridiculous than yours."
Dakota couldn't help but agree. After all, he was the only hu'man to have ever been on Bermooda. The walking, talking animals that lived on the island all seemed to agree that hu'mans were legendary monsters that had died out years ago. When Chuck first found Dakota washed up on a sandbar, he'd disguised Dakota in cowmouflage — a cow costume stitched together from blankets, sponges, and coconut shells. To keep panic from gripping the island, Dakota had continued to wear the ugly disguise ever since.
"All right, little partners!" Leatherneck's cheerful voice boomed. "Thirty seconds until noon! Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight!" "Wait!" Chuck cried, quickly turning back to his basket.
"I'm not finished yet!" But in his hurry to finish counting, he accidentally knocked over the basket and scattered leaves everywhere.
"Oh noooooo!" Chuck mooed. He got down on all fours and grabbed frantically at the wadded leaves, which were already starting to swirl away in the swift midday breeze. "Quick! Stall him! Get him to stop the countdown!" "What do you want me to do?" Dakota asked. "Stop time?"
"Twenty-three ... twenty-two ... twenty-one ..." Leatherneck counted down.
"Fifty-five! Fifty-six! Fifty-seven!" Chuck called out, trying to keep count of the escaping leaves. "Fifty-seven! Wait, did I already say fifty-seven? Grab that one! Fifty-seven! I mean — fifty-eight ... plus those five is sixty-four ... No, wait — sixty-three! What happened to the other four that were right here?"
Leatherneck reached his final countdown. "Ten ... nine ... eight ..."
"Gahhh! Ninety-two! Eighty-seven! Eleventy-three!" Chuck blurted out random numbers in a panic.
"Oh, for crying out loud!" Dakota snapped. "Give me that!" He plucked the yellow ticket out of Chuck's shirt pocket, wrote down a number, and dropped it in the box just as the countdown ended.
Calves crowded around the guessing jar. Chuck eagerly chewed on his own hoof as Leatherneck counted out the seeds in the jar and then slowly flipped through the yellow tickets in the box. There were a lot of guesses, and it felt like the judging took forever.
"And the winner is ..." Leatherneck finally announced, "... Dakota Porter, with the exact guess of seventy-four! Seventy-four, right ... on ... da ... NOSE!" Leatherneck poked the squishy sponge nose covering Dakota's face.
Chuck stared at Dakota in disbelief as all the losing calves lumbered away, grumbling slightly. He stood with his mouth hanging open as the last of his precious leaves blew away from around his hooves.
"Seventy-four?" Chuck asked. "I spent all month trying to figure out the right number, and you win it just by guessing? What made you think of seventy-four?"
Dakota scratched his head and shrugged as he pawed the ground with his fake hoof. "That's the number of smoothies you bought this month," he said.
CHAPTER 2Norman
Chuck and Dakota sat down the next morning for one of Mama Porter's famous breakfasts of pineapples, crushed oats, and coconut yogurt before heading out for their visit with the famous artist. Dakota didn't care as much about the contest as Chuck did, of course. So he'd given his prizewinning ticket to his brother. After all, Chuck was IncrediBull's biggest fan. But even though the ticket was only for one, Chuck insisted that Dakota come along. Chuck was sure that Norman Redmane wouldn't mind an extra visitor. Their little sister Patty begged to come too, but Chuck was afraid that two extra guests might be pushing it.
"This is awesome!" Chuck squealed as they began their walk to Norman Redmane's studio. "Thanks for the ticket!" Chuck carried his collection of cowmic books in a big stack, hoping that the artist would sign every one. As they trotted along, he kept pushing issues of IncrediBull under Dakota's nose.
"How can you not see the big deal with IncrediBull?" Chuck asked. "He's so cool! By day, he's Taurus Tate, mildmannered millionaire. But by night, he protects the island from evildoers!" He shoved a copy of IncrediBull #57 in front of Dakota. On the cover, the flashy redand-yellow bull was shouting "Geronimoooo!" while bursting through a wall like a huge bolt of lightning.
"Look! He can fly at the speed of lightning! He can zap evildoers right into the ground!"
"Take a look around." Dakota sighed, stretching out his arms. The gentle sound of waves echoed at them from every direction, and the salty breeze tickled their noses as it ruffled through the pink oleander flowers. "Waves. Sand. Bamboo. Flowers. This is paradise! There are no 'evildoers' here! It's like I said yesterday. This 'superhero' just doesn't look like something from a tropical island."
"Well, duuuuhh!" Chuck blurted out, rolling his eyes. "He's not from a tropical island. He's from another world! He jumped to Bermooda in a lightning bolt from over the moon! Golly, don't they have cowmic books where you're from?"
"Sure," Dakota shrugged his shoulders. "I just think they're kind of silly, that's all. The dramatic language ... the goofy names ... the fact that no one can see through their terrible disguises," he said, adjusting his cow mask.
"IncrediBull isn't silly," he said, "and Norman Redmane is legen-dairy!"
"Really?" Dakota asked. "What's he like?"
"Well ... no one's really sure," Chuck admitted.
"Leatherneck is the only one I know who's ever met him. He mostly keeps to himself and hardly ever leaves the house. He mails all his cowmic books to be printed. That's why this visit is such a big deal!"
Redmane's studio was kind of hidden. They could only find it by following a special map that came with the winning ticket. After about an hour of walking, the map led them up a small hill to a big house half buried in the side of Mount Maverick.
"Is this it?" Dakota grimaced.
It was not what they had expected. If Norman Redmane was legendary, one would never guess it from the outside of his studio. The sloping tile roof was falling apart. The rickety wooden fence in front looked like it might collapse if it were breathed on. The door was nearly hidden behind tall clumps of weedy beach grass, and the yard greeted them with a collection of warning signs that read: PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT, GO AWAY and THIS MEANS YOU!
"This fella really does keep to himself, doesn't he?" Dakota said, reading all the signs. "Looks like Leatherneck might be his only friend. Maybe we should just 'keep out' and 'go away.'"
"He has lots of fans," Chuck said, trudging through the overgrown yard. "He probably just likes his privacy. Besides, we won the chance to visit."
Chuck balanced his stack of cowmic books in one arm as he knocked on the door. "He'll be happy we're here. You'll see."
Chuck's knocking was answered by the opening of a little window in the front door. A pair of dark eyes surrounded by red fur appeared on the other side, along with a sharp voice that barked, "Who are you? What's the password?"
Password? Chuck thought. The ticket didn't say anything about a password!
"Ummm ... my name is Chuck Porter," he said. "We won a guessing contest at Leatherneck's Café?"
The face on the other side of the door squinted at them suspiciously. "The deal was for just one of you," he said.
"This is my brother, Dakota," Chuck stammered. "He really wanted to come along. He's ... ummm ... a big IncrediBull fan too." He nudged Dakota with his hoof.
"Oh. Yeah," Dakota sputtered. "'Geronimoooo!'"
The dark eyes shifted back and forth, as if searching for even more visitors. "All right," he finally said, sighing.
The door opened, and they were greeted by a round, tubby bull slurping down a bowl of coconut pudding. He was as big as Leatherneck, with wide, chubby legs that held up an even wider, chubbier body. He was covered from head to tail with shaggy fur that was the same fiery-red color as IncrediBull himself. A scraggly mane of curls blossomed from atop his head and around his neck, and his burly red belly was barely covered by a tightly stretched green tee shirt and a dirty yellow button-up that was too small to button.
This is Norman Redmane? Dakota thought. What a slob!
"Come on in," the big red bull said. His voice wasn't deep and jolly like Leatherneck's. This bull's voice was high and raspy, and sounded like he had a lump of gravel in his throat. He spoke very quickly, and he said the word "dude" ... a lot.
"Hurry up, little dudes ... and don't touch anything."
Chuck and Dakota hurried through the door and found that the inside didn't look much nicer than the outside. A sea of dust floated in the air, glowing in the sunlight that peeked through the faded yellow curtains. The ceiling was cracked; the windows were grimy; and the withered plants decorating the house looked like they hadn't been watered in ages.
"Lo'hai, Mister Redmane. It's really an honor to meet you." Chuck tried his best to shake hooves without dropping his cowmic books. "Thanks for the tour. Moohalo."
"No, dude ... just call me Norman," he answered, dropping pudding on his shirt as he ate. "And sorry about the whole 'password' thing, little buds. Sometimes you just never know who's showing up at your door."
Dakota couldn't help but chuckle. From the looks of the place, no one had shown up at this door in a long time.
Norman finished his pudding with a burp. He tossed the empty bowl onto the couch, where it landed with a dusty poof. "All right, little dudes," he said, clapping his hooves together. "Ready for the tour? You can look at anything you want," but like I said ... don't touch anything. Cool?"
Norman began the tour of his huge, unkempt house. The place was filled with strange items that Chuck recognized from the pages of IncrediBull. A bony sword from one issue, a magic crystal from another ... They were displayed all over the house, like artifacts in a very messy museum.
"Wow! Is that the Mask of Power from issue #157?" Chuck babbled, gazing at a wooden mask hanging in the hallway.
"Yup." Norman nodded. "And check this out!" He removed a flowered necklace from a wooden tiki statue near the kitchen door. "It's the Eternity Lei from issue #34! Don't wear it though ... it might send you light years into the future!"
Chuck was so thrilled that he began spilling copies of IncrediBull from his stack of cowmic books all over the stained rug on the floor.
"Whoa ... Easy, dude," Norman said. "You're making a mess."
Each jumbled room had more and more keepsakes from IncrediBull's many adventures. Chuck had read every issue of IncrediBull, so each time Norman showed him something from one of the stories, Chuck happily nodded his head.
Dakota, on the other hand, had never read a single issue of IncrediBull and didn't understand the excitement over a bunch of junk. "So ... you find all this stuff and then you write IncrediBull stories about it?" he asked.
"Maybe." Norman turned slowly and raised his left brow. "Or maybe the stories really happened. What do you think?" He winked playfully, but Dakota wasn't sure if he was kidding.
Dakota found something else on the tour much more impressive. As it turned out, Norman wasn't just a fantastic artist. He was also quite the inventor. Each cluttered room was filled with odd little machines he had built himself — crazy contraptions made of levers and gears and pulleys that performed the simplest tasks.
The kitchen had an automatic pancake flipper. The study room had a gizmo that turned book pages. The den had a device that turned on all the sunglobes at once from a long mahogany handle near the door. As they navigated around the stacks of odds and ends piled along the tour route, Dakota wondered why a creative cow like Norman hadn't invented a machine that could clean the house.
"And now comes the best part," Norman said, leading them to a set of spiral stairs in the living room. "This is the part you came to see." Chuck and Dakota followed Norman as he climbed the creaky bamboo stairs to an overhead landing with a single red door. "My friends, I present to you ... the Drawing Room."
Norman swung open the door to reveal what was easily the most cluttered room in the house. This was obviously where he spent most of his time. The place was filled with dirty dishes from countless meals that were eaten while drawing. Old issues of IncrediBull were stacked everywhere. On one side of the room was a wide drawing table surrounded by overstuffed shelves crammed full of papers, books, posters, and potted plants that looked even more lifeless than the ones downstairs.
Aside from a small window, the only real light in the room came from a sunglobe whose bulb dimly flickered above the drawing table. There were no souvenirs of IncrediBull's adventures here, except for an ugly stone statue perched on the top shelf near the door.
"Hey! Isn't that the Freaky Tiki?" Chuck said, setting down his stack of cowmic books. "The haunted statue from issue #66?"
"Yeah, dude!" Norman said. "But I can't take that one down to show you. It's pretty heavy. Besides, you know ... it's haunted."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Amazing IncrediBull"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Mike Litwin.
Excerpted by permission of Albert Whitman & Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
1. An IncrediBull Guess,
2. Norman,
3. ResponsiBull,
4. The Lesson,
5. Danger Never Stops,
6. IncrediBull and Fantasti-Calf,
7. Sharing Gifts,
8. Caged,
9. Wellington Manor,
10. Jailbreak,
11. More Than an Army,
12. Until Next Issue,