My Curious Uncle Dudley Hardcover - 2004

Excerpt

The voice was coming from above. The floor above me.

"Help," it was repeating, very calmly — almost dignified. "I say, help . . ."

I peered out into the hall. "Uncle Dudley?" I called, hesitantly. Silence. Then again, faintly:

"Help . . . I say. Help . . ."

My heart began to beat fast. I went to the door to the third-floor stairs. I opened it. I heard the cries, more clearly.

"Uncle Dudley?" I called back. "Hello?"

Unsure, I started up. I¹d never heard an adult calling for help before! I waited breathless outside the guest-room door. I called again. The cries repeated. I knocked. With a hammering heart, I turned the handle. I peered inside.

The shock I got was so, well, shocking, I don¹t remember if I was too paralyzed to scream, like in your worst nightmares, and only gasped.

But I recall for sure my hair stood on end.

There in the dim room on the dim plaid blanket, where yesterday one lonesome tiny head had sat, now sat a second. Regular size. Not a head exactly — a pair of shoulders, from which stuck a neck and a goateed mouth and a nose and cheeks and an ear.

And nothing else.

"Ah, Duncan, is that you? How nice of you to come," said Uncle Dudley's partial head. "Don't be alarmed. Well, I mean, don't be unnecessarily alarmed. You aren't,
are you?"

"Wh-wh-wh — " I replied.

"Just ran into a bit of complication, you see," the mouth went on. "Hoping you might lend a hand."

And it grinned, pleasantly.

MY CURIOUS UNCLE DUDLEY by Barry Yourgrau. Copyright (c) 2004 by Barry Yourgau. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.

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"This is my kind of book! Yourgrau and Auth are a perfect pairing. I am plenty jealous." — Daniel Pinkwater — Daniel Pinkwater