Sandapalooza Shake-Up Read online

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  CHRIS GRABENSTEIN

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  my best four-legged writing partner

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Chris Grabenstein

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by Brooklyn Allen

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2018 by Kelly Kennedy

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Grabenstein, Chris, author. | Kennedy, Kelly (Illustrator), illustrator.

  Title: Sandapalooza shake-up / Chris Grabenstein ; illustrated by Kelly Kennedy.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Random House, [2018] | Series: Welcome to Wonderland ; #3 | Summary: In order to save the reputation of the Wonderland, P.T. and Gloria must find the culprit who stole a royal tiara from the hotel.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016050421 | ISBN 978-1-5247-1758-2 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1761-2 (hardcover library binding) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1760-5 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Hotels, motels, etc.—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.G7487 San 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781524717605

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.2

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  More Favorites by Chris Grabenstein

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Chapter 1: Coming Attractions

  Chapter 2: The Sweet Suite

  Chapter 3: Royal Treatment

  Chapter 4: Walt Wilkie’s Wonder World

  Chapter 5: Cheeseburgers in Paradise!

  Chapter 6: Free Advice for Ten Thousand Dollars

  Chapter 7: The Sand Men

  Chapter 8: Tool Talk

  Chapter 9: Metal Detectors and Microscopes

  Chapter 10: Monkey See

  Chapter 11: Trouble in Paradise

  Chapter 12: Royal Pains in My Patootie

  Chapter 13: A One-Minute Mystery?

  Chapter 14: Clearing Clara

  Chapter 15: Bellhopping to It

  Chapter 16: Zombie Alert

  Chapter 17: Mess Conference

  Chapter 18: Losing Our Appetites

  Chapter 19: Making a Mountain Out of an Anthill

  Chapter 20: Behind Enemy Lines

  Chapter 21: Princess for a Day

  Chapter 22: Cinderella’s Sand Castle

  Chapter 23: Showtime on the Beach

  Chapter 24: Dirty Laundry

  Chapter 25: Surprise Evidence

  Chapter 26: Plunderland?

  Chapter 27: Scraps of Information

  Chapter 28: Getaway Minivan?

  Chapter 29: I Rest My Suitcase

  Chapter 30: Phone Trouble

  Chapter 31: Late-Night Eavesdropping

  Chapter 32: Grilling More Than Burgers

  Chapter 33: Does Everybody Go to Orlando?

  Chapter 34: Seven Wonders of the Sandy World

  Chapter 35: Checking Out

  Chapter 36: Instant Replay

  Chapter 37: Fatherly Advice

  Chapter 38: What Would Travis Do?

  Chapter 39: Jimbo in Hot Water

  Chapter 40: Case Closed

  Chapter 41: Person of Interest

  Chapter 42: Meet the Freebies

  Chapter 43: Master Chef?

  Chapter 44: The Right Side of the Menu

  Chapter 45: The Whole Picture

  Chapter 46: Special Guests

  Chapter 47: Lady-in-Waiting

  Chapter 48: Pinky Power

  Chapter 49: Couch Potato Crown

  Chapter 50: Chunky Funky Monkey to the Rescue

  Chapter 51: Monkey Business

  Chapter 52: The Darkest Night

  Chapter 53: Going from Bad to Workshop

  Chapter 54: Evil Sand Creatures

  Chapter 55: I Can’t Sand It!

  Chapter 56: Knocking on Doors

  Chapter 57: Sandtastic News!

  Chapter 58: Sand Which We Want

  Chapter 59: Science Project

  Chapter 60: Sand Devils

  Chapter 61: Ketching Up with Grandpa?

  Chapter 62: Hey, Hey, Tampa Bay

  Chapter 63: And…Action!

  Chapter 64: The Key to Finding the Tiara

  Chapter 65: A Room with a View

  Chapter 66: Poseidon’s Crown

  Chapter 67: Well-Done Burgers

  Chapter 68: The Family Plan

  Chapter 69: Metal Detectives

  Chapter 70: Burgers on the Breeze

  Chapter 71: Caution: Nerds at Work

  Chapter 72: Sand Grabs

  Chapter 73: Demolition Derby

  Chapter 74: My Crowning Achievement

  Chapter 75: And Now a Word from Their Sponsor

  Chapter 76: Family Fiesta

  P.T. and Gloria’s Fact or Fiction Quiz: Beach Blanket Edition!

  Sandapalooza Sand-Sculpting Tips That’ll Blow the Sand Right Out of Your Shorts!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know how I survived the fourteen-story plunge,” I told my audience.

  They were all sipping frosty fruit drinks and nibbling conch fritters at our motel’s brand-new poolside restaurant—the Banana Shack.

  “I slid over the first waterfall and rocketed into a ninety-degree zero-gravity free fall! It was a steeper drop than the Summit Plummet at Disney’s Blizzard Beach!”

  “Woo-hoo!” cried my grandpa, Walt Wilkie, when I mentioned outdoing his archrival, the Walt over in Orlando.

  “I slid around an awesome loop-de-loop that shot me like a cannonball across the sky and into a log flume! Next came a series of wicked switchbacks, plus an aqua tunnel that hurled me straight through a tank swarming with live sharks!”


  “That part was my idea,” added my business-savvy best friend, Gloria Ortega, because Shark Tank is her favorite TV show.

  “Finally,” I said, putting the cherry on top of the ice-cream sundae of my story, “I splashed down in a surf pool, where I caught a wave and went boarding with an audio-animatronic Surf Monkey aqua-bot!”

  “That is so cool!” said one of the kids at a nearby table.

  He and his family were among the lucky guests who’d been able to book rooms at my family’s St. Pete Beach motel after it became super famous in the movie Beach Party Surf Monkey—the Hollywood blockbuster starring Academy Award–winning actress Cassie McGinty, YouTube sensation Kevin the Monkey, and local hero Pinky Nelligan, who’s one of my best buds. The “No” neon in our No Vacancy sign had been lit for so long we were afraid it might burn out.

  “Where exactly is this waterslide?” asked the boy’s mom.

  “Right now, only in my computer.”

  “He used a RollerCoaster Tycoon expansion kit,” explained Gloria.

  “But,” I said, gazing at the towering concrete hotel on the other side of our short stucco wall, “someday we might buy the place next door and actually build it.”

  “What?” said Grandpa. “All of a sudden you want to buy the Conch Reef Resort?”

  “Hey,” I said with a shrug, “it’s the perfect height. Fourteen stories tall.”

  “Whoa, dude,” said our new chef, Jimbo. “Are they, like, selling, man?”

  Jimbo is what they call a Parrothead. That means he loves the laid-back, island-breezy music of Jimmy Buffett. Jimbo is extremely mellow and always wears a baggy Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses and has a ponytail sticking out the back of his baseball cap. He doesn’t shave too often, either.

  “Mr. Conch should sell his resort to somebody,” I told Jimbo. “Because ever since our movie came out, nobody wants to stay over there except the people who wanted to stay over here and couldn’t.”

  My audience laughed. Grandpa and I grinned.

  Fact: Conch Enterprises, the company that tried to sabotage our motel’s movie, wasn’t doing so well anymore.

  Double fact: Grandpa and I couldn’t’ve been happier if all the doughnuts in the world were wrapped in bacon and dripping with cheese.

  “It doesn’t get any better than this,” said Gloria’s dad, Mr. Ortega, who was hanging out in the lobby with my mom, waiting for our VIP guests to arrive.

  “You’re in the big leagues now, Wanda,” he told Mom. “You just have to remember what got you to the dance, and focus on fundamentals.”

  Gloria’s father, Manny Ortega, is a sportscaster on channel ten, WTSP—the local CBS station for Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota. He’s changed stations a lot in his career. That means he and Gloria have moved around a lot, too. Since WTSP probably won’t be Mr. Ortega’s final destination, they’re “extended stay” guests at the Wonderland. They rent a couple of rooms so they don’t have to buy a house that they’d just have to sell when Mr. Ortega gets “the Call” from ESPN for his dream job.

  Mom likes having Mr. Ortega at the motel. Me too. He’s extremely cool. Mom and Mr. Ortega aren’t exactly dating, but they do make goo-goo eyes at each other all the time.

  What does my dad think about Mom flirting with Mr. Ortega?

  Who knows?

  My father, as you may have already noticed, isn’t really in the picture. He hasn’t been for twelve years—he left town before I was even born. Mom doesn’t talk about him all that much. The only thing she’s ever told me is “He was very handsome and very charming, and he could tell a good story, P.T. Just like you.”

  So, Dad, if you’re reading this, drop by sometime. Apparently, we have a lot in common.

  Anyhow, back to our big VIP guests. It was Thursday. After school. We were all waiting for the royal family to arrive. Well, not the royal family, but a family full of royalty from England.

  They’d be staying in our one vacant room. Actually, it was a suite of rooms—225, 226, and 227—also known as the Cassie McGinty Suite. We call it that because that’s where the movie star and her mom, a famous producer, stayed when they were filming Beach Party Surf Monkey. We even decorated the rooms with movie posters, stills from the shoot, and a few props, like Surf Monkey’s boogie board and Cassie McGinty’s framed hippie-girl costume.

  Naturally, everybody wanted to sleep in that three-bedroom suite.

  But that weekend, it was reserved for Lord and Lady Pettybone and their teenaged daughter, Lady Lilly. Lord Pettybone was a marquess, which is higher than an earl but lower than a duke, unless your Duke is a dog.

  The Pettybone family would be traveling to Florida with their “trusted manservant” Digby, so he needed a room, too.

  All in all, the royals were getting three of our best bedrooms because they were bringing us a ton more free publicity. The Tampa Bay Times had already done a big write-up about their visit. Sales of Royal Crown Cola were soaring all along St. Pete Beach. Even the St. Pete Beach Dairy Queen and Burger King were getting in on the act with “Our Royal Cousins” meal deals.

  The royals coming to the Wonderland were traveling with the first Duchess of Twittleham’s crown, which they called the Twittleham Tiara. Loaded with precious jewels, it was priceless and super special.

  In fact, according to legend, the diamonds in the Twittleham Tiara had once belonged to Queen Guinevere, King Arthur’s wife in all those classic legends about the Knights of the Round Table. Some say Arthur got the idea for the shape of his table from Guinevere’s crown, which was also round.

  The Twittleham Tiara was worth so much money we probably should’ve booked it a room of its own!

  “We have a safe in the office,” Mom said to Digby, the royal family’s butler, who came into the lobby ahead of the others to make sure everything was “tickety-boo,” which, I found out later, is British for “hunky-dory” or “okeydokey.”

  “I’m certain you do,” said Digby, looking down his nose at Mom and sniffing like he smelled cat poop. The butler had a leather-covered lockbox handcuffed to his wrist. The box was about the size of, oh, a tiara. I wished I had X-ray vision. Then I could’ve seen all the Twittleham diamonds!

  “However,” Digby continued, “Lord and Lady Pettybone prefer to rely on our own tried, tested, and true security measures.”

  He tapped the box.

  “It is constructed of two-inch-thick reinforced steel and has a GPS tracking device embedded in its base.”

  “It’s also chained to your arm,” I said.

  “Indeed,” said Digby.

  “Ah, you’ve met Digby, I take it?” said a man who walked into the lobby just then. He was wearing crisp white pants, an even crisper white shirt, and a posh blue blazer. An elegant lady in a billowy summer dress and a blond girl maybe a year or two older than me were with him.

  “I’m Charles Pettybone, Marquess of Herferrshire,” said the man. “This is my wife, Lady Annette Mary Gertrude Humphries Pettybone, and, of course, our daughter, Lady Lilly.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Mom, doing a tiny curtsy.

  “Meet me uptown!” said Mr. Ortega, raising his palm to slap our newest guest a high five.

  Lord Pettybone left him hanging.

  “I’m absolutely thrilled to be sleeping in the same room where Cassie McGinty once slept!” said Lady Lilly.

  Her mother smiled. “Our daughter is quite a fan of your film about the surfing monkey. In fact, Lilly’s insistence was the main reason we agreed to stop here in…Where are we again, Digby?”

  “St. Petersburg, milady,” said the butler, clicking his heels and bowing from the waist.

  “Quite,” said Lady Pettybone.

  “Well,” I said, “if you loved Beach Party Surf Monkey, you’ll be happy to hear that the Wonderland offers all VIP guests an exclusive behind-the-scenes movie tour.”

  I showed Lady Lilly my elbow. “Recognize this?”

  “Not really…”

  “It was in the fli
ck.”

  “Brilliant! So you’re a movie star, too?”

  “Nah. Just my elbow.”

  Gloria stepped forward and handed our new guests the glossy brochures she’d designed for our movie tours. Like I said, Gloria is an awesome entrepreneur.

  “Tours start at fifteen dollars a person and include a stop at our Surf Monkey souvenir shop,” she told our royal guests. “You can also enjoy a delicious Surf Monkey burger with curly monkey-tail fries at the Wonderland’s all-new, all-fabulous Banana Shack.”

  “N’yes,” said Lord Pettybone. “I’m certain we can.”

  “Plus,” I said, “since this is a long holiday weekend here in the United States, St. Pete Beach is sponsoring its first-ever Sandapalooza sand sculpture competition.”

  “How fascinating,” said Lady Pettybone, sounding totally not fascinated. She turned to Mom. “Is everything as it should be with our arrangements?”

  “Yes, Your Ladyship,” said Mom. “I have you staying with us for five nights. You’ll be upstairs in the Cassie McGinty Suite through Tuesday morning.”

  “I wish we could stay even longer,” said Lilly. “Especially if there’s going to be a Sandapalooza!”

  “Lilly, love,” said her mum (which is what they call moms over in England, I think), “we promised we’d take Great-Grandmama’s tiara to Disney World.”

  “That is the main purpose of our trip,” added Lilly’s dad. “Won’t it be thrilling to see the Twittleham Tiara on display inside Cinderella Castle?”

  “Yes, Father,” said Lady Lilly with a dainty bow.

  We were glomming on to Disney World’s big new princess promotional push. The first Duchess of Twittleham’s tiara would be on exhibit in Orlando for the next twelve months. But since the Wonderland was the priceless tiara’s first stop in Florida and this was the first time it had ever been in America, we had first dibs on all the hoopla and publicity, which made my grandfather very, very happy.

  Having anything before Disney always did.

  Our family feud with Disney started way back on October 1, 1970, when my grandfather opened a wacky motel and miniature amusement park called Walt Wilkie’s Wonder World.