Table Of ContentText copyright © 2005 by Freddy and the French Fries, Ltd.
Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Rudy Baldacci
All rights reserved.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at HachetteBookGroupUSA.com
First eBook Edition: July 2008
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to
real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Summary: While competing with a rival restaurant for the winning float in the
Founder's Day parade, nine-year-old Freddy Funkhouser constructs a batch of
animated French fries in his secret laboratory that come to life after receiving an
enormous jolt of electricity.
ISBN: 978-0-316-03393-0
The illustrations for this book were done in pen and ink on illustration board.
Contents
CHAPTER 1: FREDDY FUNKHOUSER
CHAPTER 2: THE FUNKHOUSER EXPERIMENT
CHAPTER 3: THE JIGGY-WATTS CAPER
CHAPTER 4: SIX FRIES IF YOU COUNT HEADS
CHAPTER 5: THE FLIGHT OF THE FRIES
CHAPTER 6: THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS KID
CHAPTER 7: CURLY RUNS THE BASES
CHAPTER 8: TOO MANY PIES
CHAPTER 9: THE POOKESVILLE CHESS MATCH
CHAPTER 10: ALL FALL DOWN
CHAPTER 11: QUEEN NANCY THE NICEST OF NANTUCKET
CHAPTER 12: THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
CHAPTER 13: FRENCH-FRIED MIRACLE
CHAPTER 14: HOWIE KAPOWIE SPILLS THE BEANS
CHAPTER 15: THE ATTACK OF THE SPANKER GANG
CHAPTER 16: FRIES VS. GUYS
CHAPTER 17: PURPULIS ENORMOSIS
CHAPTER 18: THE SPANKERS STRIKE BACK
CHAPTER 19: THE FLOAT THAT REALLY FLOATS
CHAPTER 20: THE BURGER CASTLE’S A HIT
CHAPTER 21: THE FINAL SHOWDOWN
To Spencer and Collin, my two favorite Fries.
CHAPTER
FREDDY FUNKHOUSER
FREDDY T. FUNKHOUSER stood at the door of the Burger Castle and
scratched his ear, which was a little difficult since he was wearing a chicken
costume. He rubbed his beak and practiced his clucking as he waited for
customers. His father, Alfred Funkhouser, insisted that Freddy greet each
customer that came into the Funkhouser family’s restaurant with a welcoming
“cluck-cluck.”
“Pow-pow-pow!” said Alfred Funkhouser as he rolled by on skates,
dressed in his tomato costume, shooting seeds from the automatic seed shooters
attached to his forearms. The seed shooter was one of Alfred’s many strange
inventions. “Take cover, incoming. Ack-ack-ack!” cried out Alfred as he fired
all over the place.
“Better save the ammo for the paying customers, Dad,” Freddy said
as he patiently picked the tiny seeds off his wings.
“Right-O, Freddy. How many customers have we had today?”
“That would be, like, zero,” said Freddy’s thirteen-year-old sister,
Nancy, as she flounced by in her ketchup-bottle costume. An aspiring actress,
the tall, skinny Nancy Funkhouser flounced dramatically everywhere, swishing
her flaming red hair this way and that. She had a large trunk of costumes in her
bedroom she had gotten from an old theater and dressed up in crazy outfits all
the time. She constantly spouted dialogue from plays, movies, TV, and
commercials.
“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” cried out Nancy
to an invisible audience. The five Guacamole brothers, who worked at the
restaurant dressed as French fries, looked up, sniggered, and went back to their
card playing and magazine reading.
“Cluck-cluck,” replied Freddy, staring at his sister and tapping his
beak with his left wing. “Cluck-cluck, here I am, O Nanny Boo-Boo. Herefore
art I am.”
Freddy and his Dad sometimes called her “Nanny Boo-Boo”
because when he was very little, Freddy would run to his big sister when he got
hurt and say, “Nanny, Boo-Boo.” Even though he was nine years old now,
Freddy still called her that when he wanted to make her mad. He considered
making his sister miserable one of the most important jobs he had, because she
certainly tried to make his life miserable every chance she got.
“Hmmpph,” she snorted. “You’ve ruined my concentration. I can’t
possibly work under these conditions,” she complained.
“You’re not working right now,” pointed out Freddy.
“Duh. We don’t have any customers. They’re all over there
cramming dead cows into their mouths.”
Nancy pointed her bottle top across the street to the enormous and
fancy burger restaurant owned by the Spanker family. Patty Cakes, which served
everything from burgers to cakes, was far more than a restaurant. The place had
its own Ferris wheel, roller coaster, splash rides, movie theater, video arcade,
and lots more. Their competitor’s sign had a large plastic charcoal hamburger
patty sitting on top of a pink cake. The patty and cake logo was on everything,
from the staff uniforms to advertisements in the paper to the Patty Cakes blimp
that glided all over town. The Spankers drove a big pink Cadillac that played the
ditty: “Patty-cake, patty-cake, Spanker man, follow us, follow us to Spanker
Land.”
It made Freddy want to puke every time he heard it.
“Beef — it’s what’s for dinner,” said Nancy dramatically, and then
fell to the floor in a moving death scene before standing and taking a bow.
“Thank you, thank you,” she murmured. “No, no encore, really, not another
encore, my adoring fans. Fifteen is enough. Well, perhaps just one more.”
Freddy could only shake his head. Of fifty million sisters he could
have had, he got her. He said, “I’ve performed a rigorous calculation and
concluded that the fat and sodium content of a number six deluxe special at Patty
Cakes is equal to eating four fatted calves and five pounds of salt.” Freddy liked
to use big words when he talked about scientific stuff.
“Right-o, Freddy,” agreed his father. “I’ve made the same
calculation. Not very healthy fare.”
“But that’s why everyone goes there, Dad,” explained his daughter,
“because it’s bad for you and grease tastes good.” She performed a little tap
dance and squirted ketchup out of her costume’s head. “Good to the last drop,”
she recited to her adoring fans.
“It doesn’t taste half as good as Dad’s soybean and tofu burgers or
