Welcome to Wonderland #4 Read online

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  CHRIS GRABENSTEIN

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  Welcome to Wonderland: Home Sweet Motel

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  THE HAUNTED MYSTERY SERIES

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  COAUTHORED WITH JAMES PATTERSON

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  I Even Funnier

  I Totally Funniest

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  AND MANY MORE!

  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 © 2019 by Chris Grabenstein

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Brooklyn Allen

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2019 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.

  Title: Beach battle blowout / by Chris Grabenstein.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Random House, [2019] | Series: Welcome to Wonderland ; #4 | Summary: P.T. and Gloria need a great plan to ensure the Wonderland can beat a slick new attraction in the “Fun in the Sun” contest.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017006197 | ISBN 978-1-5247-1762-9 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1765-0 (hardcover library binding) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1764-3 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Hotels, motels, etc.—Fiction. | Contests—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.G7487 Bb 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781524717643

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

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  More Favorites by Chris Grabenstein

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Duel with the Dolphin King

  Chapter 2: King of the Seas

  Chapter 3: Grumpy Mr. Frumpkes

  Chapter 4: After-School Activities

  Chapter 5: The Fun Bunch

  Chapter 6: Funshine

  Chapter 7: Growth Hacking

  Chapter 8: Suite Dreams

  Chapter 9: Our Own Personal Parrothead

  Chapter 10: Hole in Fun

  Chapter 11: Walt Versus Walt

  Chapter 12: Making a Big to-Do

  Chapter 13: Mystery Shoppers

  Chapter 14: Big, Bold, Boffo

  Chapter 15: Muggy with a Chance of Brainstorms

  Chapter 16: Stiff Competition

  Chapter 17: Boring, Boring, Over the Bounding Main

  Chapter 18: All Hands on Deck!

  Chapter 19: Funmeister Misery

  Chapter 20: Duuude

  Chapter 21: Biz Wiz

  Chapter 22: Grubstake

  Chapter 23: The Babysitters Club

  Chapter 24: The Fountain of Tall

  Chapter 25: Waterworks

  Chapter 26: Playing the Market

  Chapter 27: Mystery Guests Sign In?

  Chapter 28: Our First Intern

  Chapter 29: Croaking Like a Frog

  Chapter 30: Where Pelicans Soar

  Chapter 31: Fun in the Sun

  Chapter 32: Surf Bored

  Chapter 33: Pirate Schemes

  Chapter 34: Pirates, Yo-Ho-Ho!

  Chapter 35: Pirates from Outer Space!

  Chapter 36: Checking Out

  Chapter 37: Rocketing into the Future

  Chapter 38: Having a Blast?

  Chapter 39: We’re in the Money

  Chapter 40: Frolf!

  Chapter 41: Game On!

  Chapter 42: Zipping Up a Win

  Chapter 43: Winner Takes All

  Chapter 44: They’re Baaaaack

  Chapter 45: Who Wants to Beat Bradley Badly?

  Chapter 46: Not-So-Phantastic News

  Chapter 47: You Gotta Have a Gimmick

  Chapter 48: Beach Battle Plans

  Chapter 49: Air Fur One

  Chapter 50: Beach Business

  Chapter 51: In the Doghouse

  Chapter 52: Supersized Fun

  Chapter 53: Pros, Not Poetry

  Chapter 54: Racing to the Bottom

  Chapter 55: The Thrill of the Dill

  Chapter 56: Snarlin’ with Garland

  Chapter 57: More Daydreams

  Chapter 58: Brontosaurus Wrecks

  Chapter 59: Doggedly Determined

  Chapter 60: Running with the Big Dogs

  Chapter 61: Polishing Our Act

  Chapter 62: Frolf Time!

  Chapter 63: Coach Bradley

  Chapter 64: Here Come the Judges

  Chapter 65: Giant Disaster

  Chapter 66: Teed Off

  Chapter 67: Doggy Paddling

  Chapter 68: A Well-Done Burger?

  Chapter 69: Welcome to Loserland

  Chapter 70: Change of Heart = Change of Plans

  Chapter 71: The Wackiest Place on Earth

  Chapter 72: Pirate Laugh Attack

  Chapter 73: Buh-Bye, Bradley

  Chapter 74: Not-So-Mysterious Shopper

  Chapter 75: Fun in the Sun

  P.T.’s (Not Exactly) Patented Storytelling Tips

  P.T. and Gloria’s Fact or Fiction Quiz: Fun-in-the-Sun Edition!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For the late Thomas Aloysius Grabenstein—

  my dad

  “This weekend,” I told my audience, “I had a duel with a dolphin.”

  “Whaaaa?” said
everybody else.

  Fact: when you live in a motel, you always have the best stories on Monday mornings.

  “The Wonderland’s right on the beach,” I told my history class. “So I grew up speaking Dolphin.”

  I gave a quick demo. “Eeeek squeeeee, klik-klik.”

  “What’s that mean?” asked my bud Bruce Brandow.

  “ ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’ ”

  “Dolphins say that?”

  “Yep. Then they do it. Right there in the Gulf. That’s why the water’s so warm.”

  “Gross,” said Bruce.

  We were between bells, just waiting for our teacher, Mr. Frumpkes, to march in and put us all to sleep with a barrage of boring facts. It was up to me to spin a story so scintillating it could fight off the Frumpkes Funk.

  “On Saturday, I was riding the waves, just surfing along—”

  “Surfing?” scoffed Adam Shapera, a big guy who always sits in the back of the room so it’s easier to flick people’s ears. “Who taught you how to do that?”

  “Kevin the Monkey,” said my good friend Gloria Ortega. “Star of the smash hit Beach Party Surf Monkey.”

  Unimpressed, Adam blew a lip fart.

  I didn’t let Adam slow me down, because everybody else was hanging on my every word, scooching their seats closer.

  “I was carving across a wave. Totally cranking. It was epic. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, this dolphin pops up!”

  “The dolphin blew his airhole at me. It sounded like one of Adam Shapera’s lip farts. It spooked me so much I wiped out.”

  “What’d the dolphin want?” asked Bruce.

  “To challenge me to a friendly competition.” I put on my best high-pitched dolphin voice. “ ‘I am Frederick, the Dolphin King. I challenge you to a duel!’ ”

  “Whoa,” said Bruce. “Just like that Alexander Hamilton dude with that other dude.”

  “Aaron Burr,” said Gloria.

  “Exactly,” I said. “But we wouldn’t be dueling with pistols. It’d be unfair. Dolphins don’t have trigger fingers.”

  “That’s so true,” said Adam, finally getting into the story with everybody else.

  “We decided on a race,” I said. “From the Gulf waters behind the Wonderland all the way up St. Pete Beach to the Don CeSar Hotel. It’d be me and my board against King Frederick and his mighty flippers. Human against dolphin. Mano a mammalo. I, of course, agreed to King Frederick’s terms. But only because I knew I’d win.”

  “How’d you know that?” Adam asked eagerly.

  “Simple,” I told him. “I was carrying a secret weapon!”

  “Six other dolphins surrounded King Fred,” I said, then switched back to my squeaky dolphin voice. “ ‘Make a lane, oh loyal subjects! Three of thee on either side.’ ”

  Gloria had her fingers jammed in her ears. She hates when I do Dolphin. She says it sounds like a fork scraping across her teeth.

  “The dolphins split up, formed two lines. The king and I were in the middle—me on my board, him on his belly. The Dolphin King squealed, ‘Kaaah! Quee! Eeek!’ and the race was on! He shot off to an early lead. But remember—I still had my secret weapon!”

  “So, what was it?” asked Bruce, who couldn’t stand the suspense, which, by the way, is a very important part of any story. Because if the thread of your story leaves your audience dangling, they won’t dare let go.

  “You ever heard of kitesurfing?” I asked him.

  “Sure.”

  “Well, Fred the Dolphin King hadn’t. Imagine his surprise when I unfurled my kite, caught a tailwind, and flew up the Gulf at forty-six miles per hour.”

  “That’s forty knots,” explained Gloria, after she tapped her calculator. My best friend is a business wiz. Her calculator is always fired up and ready to crunch numbers.

  “Since the rules of our race didn’t specifically prohibit kites or outboard motors or anything, the Dolphin King graciously admitted defeat when he and his pals finally caught up with me at the finish line. He offered me his crown, but I told him, ‘No thanks, King Fred. Winning is its own reward.’ ”

  “Cool,” said Bruce.

  “Yeah. I read that in a fortune cookie once.”

  In the back row, Adam was raising his hand. He had an extremely skeptical look on his face.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Where’d you stash all your secret gear? The kite, the harness, and the towlines?”

  “In my board shorts, bro.”

  The whole class, including Adam, cracked up.

  Yep, everybody in the classroom was laughing.

  Except our teacher, Mr. Frumpkes.

  He was standing in the doorway, scowling at me.

  “Do you know what we call this class, Mr. Wilkie?” asked Mr. Frumpkes, both hands jabbed against his bony hips so he could glare at me even harder.

  “History, sir,” I replied. “Unless, of course, you want to switch it to recess, which would be awesome. Adam Shapera brought his soccer ball.”

  Mr. Frumpkes blinked repeatedly. His glasses magnified his flickering eyelashes so much they looked like moths dancing near a bonfire.

  “Mr. Wilkie,” Mr. Frumpkes fumed, “this is, indeed, history. A class where we study facts. We do not regale our classmates with implausible recitations of untruths such as your ridiculous tale about the Dolphin King. Dolphins do not communicate with humans, and they do not have kings.”

  “Are you sure, sir?” asked Adam from the back row. “My little sister has a hair clip shaped like a dolphin, and it’s wearing a sparkly gold crown.”

  “I saw a talking dolphin in a TV commercial,” said Bruce. “I think it was for swimming pool supplies….”

  Mr. Frumpkes closed his eyes. “Do you see what you have done, Phineas Taylor Wilkie?”

  Fact: whenever Mr. Frumpkes is really seriously annoyed with me, he calls me by my full name instead of just P.T.

  “You have warped your classmates’ impressionable young minds with your preposterous whoppers.”

  Gloria raised her hand.

  “Now what?” said Mr. Frumpkes, clearly seething. “Do you have a problem, Miss Ortega?”

  “No problem here, sir,” said Gloria. “However, if you are referring to Whoppers, the malted milk balls manufactured by the Hershey Company, you may have a problem. Whoppers is a registered trademark and, as such, can’t be used without written consent from the Hershey legal department.”

  “Never mind!” hollered Mr. Frumpkes, his face going code purple. “Open your books. Today we will be learning about another famous Floridian—the Miami pharmacist who, in 1944, developed the first widely used sunscreen….”

  And blah-blah-blah for almost an hour. When the bell finally rang, Mr. Frumpkes was telling us how Ponce de León had planted Florida’s first orange trees “sometime between 1513 and 1565.”

  A fifty-two-year period.

  Which is exactly how long a period in Mr. Frumpkes’s history class usually feels.

  Gloria and I always ride the bus home together after school when she doesn’t have a Junior Achievement meeting with her fellow business-loving buds.

  Gloria and her dad are “extended stay” guests at my family’s wacky motel on St. Pete Beach because her father is a sportscaster for WTSP, channel ten. When you work in TV, you change jobs a lot. Cities, too. Gloria and Mr. Ortega have lived in Scranton, Buffalo, Chattanooga, and Tucson (to name just a few), where he worked for WNEP, WKBW, WRCB, and KVOA, respectively.

  Fact: when you work in broadcasting, your life becomes a gigantic jumble of letters with lots of extra Ws. It’s kind of like playing Boggle.

  Since the Ortegas don’t know how long they’ll be living in Florida before they move on to their next TV gig, staying at a motel makes more sense than buying a house.

>   It’s also more fun, especially for Gloria. If you’re a kid, our motel is the best place on earth to call home.

  Think about it: There’s a swimming pool, a miniature golf course, goofy decorations, a beach, a video game room, and all the ice cubes you could ever need. Someone vacuums your room and makes your bed every day and (here’s the best part) it isn’t you! There’s a hair dryer in the bathroom and a microwave in the bedroom, so your zapping needs are totally covered. Did I mention the free Wi-Fi and cable TV, plus vending machines filled with convenient snack-food items and frosty beverages, plus, out back, the Banana Shack, where ham-burgers sizzle on an open grill night and day?

  Fact: the Wonderland Motel is kid heaven.

  The school bus chugged down Gulf Boulevard, dropping people off every three or four blocks.

  “Hey, there’s the WTSP news van,” said Gloria as we neared the bus stop one away from our own.

  The TV station’s truck, with a satellite dish and a forest of antennas on top, was parked in front of a brand-new boxy building that looked like a flamingo-pink and neon-green castle. Its freshly paved parking lot was decorated with Grand Opening! banners and balloons. A flashy sign out front labeled it the Fun Castle. A video screen promised Climbing Walls! Skee-Ball! Trampolines! Ball Crawls! And the Most Amazing Indoor Golf Course Ever—the Mega Mini!