Laugh Out Loud Read online

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2017 by James Patterson

  Illustrations by Jeff Ebbeler

  Cover design by Neil Swaab

  Cover copyright © Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Excerpt from Pottymouth and Stoopid copyright © 2017 by James Patterson

  Illustrations in excerpt by Stephen Gilpin

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Jimmy Patterson Books / Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  littlebrown.com

  twitter.com/littlebrown

  facebook.com/littlebrownandcompany

  First ebook edition: August 2017

  JIMMY Patterson Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The JIMMY Patterson name and logo are trademarks of JBP Business, LLC.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  ISBN 978-0-316-43147-7

  E3-20170711-JV-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Dream Big!

  Chapter 2: My Marvelous Visitors

  Chapter 3: Greetings, People Not of Earth

  Chapter 4: Meanwhile, Back in Reality…

  Chapter 5: Working on a Dream

  Chapter 6: Meet the ’Rents

  Chapter 7: Sharing My Dream

  Chapter 8: Back to School

  Chapter 9: The World According to Quackenberry

  Chapter 10: Dream Job

  Chapter 11: Ideas Take Flight

  Chapter 12: Booking It

  Chapter 13: A Book’s Best Friend

  Chapter 14: G’BOSH

  Chapter 15: Streaming Books

  Chapter 16: Bank Shot

  Chapter 17: Mystery! Suspense! Magic!

  Chapter 18: Home Field Advantage

  Chapter 19: Sticky Notes

  Chapter 20: Speaking Up for Myself

  Chapter 21: Bursting My Bubble

  Chapter 22: Be Like Bud

  Chapter 23: Street Corner Inspiration

  Chapter 24: Fun Raising

  Chapter 25: Buried Treasure

  Chapter 26: My First Real Book!

  Chapter 27: Now What?

  Chapter 28: I ♥ Librarians!

  Chapter 29: PAR-TAY!

  Chapter 30: Banking on a New Bank

  Chapter 31: Robo-Bankers

  Chapter 32: The Friendly Neighborhood Billionaire

  Chapter 33: Mission from Mars

  Chapter 34: After-School Special Delivery

  Chapter 35: Life Is but a Dream

  Chapter 36: A Winning Idea

  Chapter 37: Tommy Time

  Chapter 38: My Lucky Night?

  Chapter 39: Web Browsing

  Chapter 40: Money Man to the Rescue!

  Chapter 41: Garage Bands

  Chapter 42: Garage/Book Sale

  Chapter 43: Meeting Uncle Sam

  Chapter 44: Don’t Quit Your Day Job?

  Chapter 45: Rain, Rain, Go Away

  Chapter 46: Stick a Fork in Me, I’m Done

  Chapter 47: Keep Hope Alive

  Chapter 48: My Lucky Day

  Chapter 49: Who Is Y?

  Chapter 50: Hit the Road, Jimmy!

  Chapter 51: My Dream Destination

  Chapter 52: The Gatekeepers

  Chapter 53: Dream Time

  Chapter 54: Surprise, Surprise

  Chapter 55: Y Not?

  Chapter 56: Back to School

  Chapter 57: Welcome to JIMMY Books!

  Chapter 58: The Best Part of My Dream?

  Epilogue: Jimmy’s Who’s Who List

  About the Author

  Jimmy Patterson Books for Young Readers

  A Sneak Peek at Pottymouth and Stoopid

  Newsletters

  For Aubrey Poole and Jenny Bak.

  —JP

  For all the teachers who make reading fun!

  —CG

  Chapter 1

  Dream Big!

  Hi, my name is Jimmy and you’re reading one of my books!

  Well, actually, it’s your book. Or the library’s. Or maybe it’s your friend’s or your cousin’s or your sister’s and they lent it to you, which means they’re sort of like a library (which is totally awesome, by the way).

  The point is, I, Jimmy, published this book. That’s right. I made it at my own book-making company called… ta-da: JIMMY!

  I have to tell you: seeing that JIMMY logo on the cover of this book is pretty cool.

  You want to go back and look at it again?

  Go ahead. I’ll wait.

  (While you’re checking it out, I’ll hum something from Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan, one of my favorite books about the power of music!)

  You’re back? Great!

  For me, that little JIMMY thingy is my dream come true.

  I don’t know this for sure, but I think the most important thing in the world is for kids to have dreams.

  What’s yours?

  You do dream, don’t you? And not just when you’re sleeping. I’m talking about a BIG, wide-awake, I’ll-do-whatever-it-takes-to-make-it-happen kind of dream. Something like winning the Olympics, finding the cure for a scary disease, stopping your little brother from gumming up the Xbox controller with peanut butter again, or running your own book company.

  Fact is that ever since I was a little kid (yeah, yeah—soooo long ago, right?) I’ve loved books.

  You ever hear that saying, “Do what you love, love what you do”? Well, that’s exactly why I wanted to start my own book company.

  I know how crazy that sounds. Laugh-out-loud nutso. At least that’s what all the grown-ups in my life kept telling me.

  “That sounds crazy,” said my uncle Herman.

  “Laugh-out-loud nutso,” added Aunt Irene.

  “Run a book company? You?” said this bald guy named Jeff. “You’re just a middle schooler! You won’t stand a chance, kid. I’ll crush you like a cockroach—just like I crushed all the other, older cockroaches who came before you!”

  (Jeff, I think, runs his own book company.)

  But like I said, a kid has to have a dream before any of his dreams can come true.

  So here’s how everything happened; how an ordinary kid like me got his own publishing company. It’s so exciting, I could write a book about it.

  So guess what?

  I did!

  Chapter 2

  My Marvelous Visitors

  Okay, here’s how my book company got started.

  Late one summer night, I went walking with my dog, Quixote, which, by the way is pronounced KEY-HO-TAY. That’s right. I named him after the lead character from the classic Spanish novel The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. (Don’t ask me how to
pronounce his last name. I’m still trying to learn how to say ¿Dónde está el baño?) It’s all about this guy who is an epic dreamer and fights windmills. He’s kind of a weird dude.

  Anyway, we weren’t too far from our house in San Jose, California, and I was reading The Marvels by Brian Selznick.

  Yep. I love books so much I can walk and read at the same time.

  Unless there is an open manhole. Or a curb. Curbs are tough.

  Anyway, have you read The Marvels? The first half is told completely in pencil drawings: Crashing waves are about to sink the Kraken, a whaling ship, where our hero, Billy Marvel, is putting on a show for the sailors.

  Man, I was totally lost in Mr. Selznick’s amazing tale.

  So lost, I didn’t notice the creepy clump of trees Quixote and I had just wandered into.

  We kept walking deeper and deeper into the darkness, because I kept falling deeper and deeper into Brian Selznick’s swirling tale of adventure.

  Hey, when I’m into a book, I crawl in all the way!

  On the illustrated pages, lightning flashed and thunder boomed. Billy was about to be swept overboard as the ship sank!

  I could hear the wooden beams of the Kraken creaking and groaning as the waves pounded its sides.

  Splinters and wood chips showered down all around me.

  (Yeah, actual wood stuff falling from the sky was a little weird. Even for a guy who totally lives in his imagination like me.)

  Then the crackling and snapping grew louder. It sounded like trees were exploding all around me! Seconds later, the splintering sounds were blasted away by the humongous rumbling THWUMP and WARBLE of unearthly engines.

  The darkness was replaced by a dusty shaft of bright white light.

  I finally looked up from my book. Quixote looked up, too. Then he whimpered and tucked his tail between his legs.

  Because the two of us were standing right where the hovering alien spaceship wanted to land.

  Chapter 3

  Greetings, People Not of Earth

  The flying saucer snapped off a few more branches as it completed its slow descent to the ground and settled with a soft, airy KOOSH!

  Quixote whined and grumbled. I think he wanted to go home.

  Not me. I wanted to see who (or what) was inside the spaceship!

  A side door ZHURRR-WHOOSHed open. A gangplank slid forward. And the parade started! Just about every creature from every space story ever told was crammed on board that one ship!

  It was like a minivan hauling the all-star soccer team from all the stars.

  Some I recognized from movies and TV. Others were from books, like Mrs. Whatsit from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and Hilo from The Boy Who Crashed to Earth by Judd Winick.

  They were all extremely friendly, so we spent the night sitting around, talking.

  The space creatures all thought some of the things we earthlings had were weird. Like spray cheese in a can. And silly string in a can. And joke-store springy snakes that jump out of cans.

  Yes, they were seriously hung up on cans. Maybe because they spend so much time sealed up inside spaceships.

  And farts. None of them understood farts.

  “Is this some kind of internal gas-powered jet propulsion you employ after eating beans?” they wondered.

  That’s when a guy with a bubble-brain head and ginormous bug eyes spoke up. I wasn’t exactly sure what movie or book he came from. Probably one like The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells where the aliens aren’t all that cute and cuddly.

  “We have a very important message for the planet Earth,” the alien said in a mechanical voice (he sounded like he ate computer chips for lunch every day). “Extremely, enormously, urgently important.”

  Yep, this was first contact, the very first official words humans had ever received from outer space, and I was going to be the human doing all the receiving!

  Roughly translated, what the big head basically said was “Your planet is in really, really, really deep doo-doo.”

  (I can’t repeat the actual words the spaceman used. Moms and teachers don’t like that kind of language. If I used the actual words, they wouldn’t let kids read this book, and if that happened, you’d miss a really cool story.)

  “The people of earth,” the space ambassador continued, “must read more, and learn more, and think a whole lot more. Or else.”

  I gulped a little. Quixote whimpered again.

  “You must assist your fellow earthlings in this effort!” said another one of the aliens. “You must open a book company, Jimmy!”

  “Do this you must,” added Yoda.

  “Or else,” said Marvin the Martian.

  And he was aiming his ray gun straight at me!

  Chapter 4

  Meanwhile, Back in Reality…

  Okay, okay, okay.

  You’ve probably already figured out that this wasn’t how JIMMY Books got started. It wasn’t because aliens landed in California and told me I had to do it to save the planet.

  But it shows you just how much I love stories.

  Love, love, love ’em!

  You also know that I did, eventually, start JIMMY Books. I mean, you’re reading a JIMMY Book, right? If I’d never started the company we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

  So here’s how it really happened. The truth. You could shelve this next bit in the nonfiction section because it’s the real deal. Except for where I might exaggerate. Or make up another story for the fun of it. But even then it’s still mostly true.

  Like I said before all those aliens landed, everyone should have a dream. Maybe a couple of dreams. My dream was to start an amazing book company while I was still a kid. That’s right. This wasn’t going to be one of those “when I grow up, I wanna” kind of dreams they make you write about in middle school essays.

  Nope. I wanted to create a book company for kids, by kids, and of kids. That was my dream.

  The girl who lived next door? She dreamed about leaving her room and playing with all the kids she watched out her window every day.

  Her name was Madison. She was severely asthmatic and had a bunch of other health problems with complicated names that sound weirder than the alien word for “deep doo-doo.”

  The grown-ups all called my next-door neighbor “sickly.”

  I just called her Maddie.

  Maddie was the reason I always carried twice as many library books in my backpack as I could ever read before they were due. Half were for me, half were for her.

  The librarian at school, Ms. Nicole Sprenkle, was cool about it, too. Hey, she might’ve loved books even more than me—if that’s mathematically possible.

  Whenever I visited Maddie I had to wear a sterile mask. I didn’t mind. I just pretended I was a doctor or a bank robber or a test pilot flying at the speed of sound.

  “How’d you like to be stranded in a blizzard at the Washington, DC, airport?” I asked Maddie, handing her a copy of Kate Messner’s Capture the Flag.

  She sort of shrugged. “I guess it would be okay.”

  “Okay?” I said. “Why, before long, I bet you’d be tracking down the despicable thieves who just stole the two-hundred-year-old flag that flew over Fort McHenry and inspired Francis Scott Key to write ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Too bad none of the grown-ups will listen to you or your friends after you present your evidence about what the bad guys are up to.”

  Maddie practically ripped the book out of my hands and dove right in.

  It made her dream come true. For 240 pages, she was out of her room and on an action-packed adventure in Washington, DC, that included a thrilling trip along airport baggage conveyor belts!

  Yep. Books can be better than an amusement park. They’ll take you on all sorts of wild rides. And you don’t have to worry about long lines or finding a place to park.

  That night, Maddie called me. She’d already finished Capture the Flag.

  “Jimmy?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  �
�Give me another book. Please?”

  Chapter 5

  Working on a Dream

  I figured there were tons of kids just like Maddie all over the world.

  Not that they were sick all the time. But they were hungry—maybe even starving—for fun and exciting books.

  That meant I would need to make lots and lots of books. But how could I pull it off? Don’t forget, I was just a kid. Still am. But being a kid has its advantages. For one thing, we eat a lot of delicious sugary snacks. Sugar will keep your mind buzzing. Plus, kids wake up earlier than adults. That’s why they invented cartoons, which we watch while eating sugary cereal. Talk about a mental buzz.

  After brainstorming for weeks, it was time to start putting my thoughts down on paper. I drew sketches whenever and wherever I could of what I wanted my book company to look like.

  By the way, drawing while walking gets easier with practice.

  Still, I don’t recommend doing it while riding a bike or skateboarding. You bump into stuff. Stuff like fire hydrants and lamp poles.

  I was obsessed.

  All the kids at school were totally into my dream, too.

  “I want to work at your book company!” said my good friend Chris Grabbetts. “I like writing.”

  “You mean you have fun making up stories, too?”

  “Sometimes. But mostly, I like writing. Especially cursive. I’m thinking about taking up calligraphy, except I don’t know how to spell it.” Like always, Chris was joking around.

  “Instead of freight elevators, you need a Ferris wheel to move books from one floor to the other,” suggested my bud Raphael Katchadopoulos, whom everybody calls Rafe. He’s pretty good with markers and a sketchpad so he doodled a quick visual. I love, love, loved it.

  “You also need a bowling alley,” said Chris.

  I raised both eyebrows. “A bowling alley?”

  He shrugged. “I like to bowl.”

  “I’ll put a lane over here near the Ping-Pong and foosball tables,” said Rafe, his pen scribbling across the page.