Available:*
Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
---|---|---|---|---|
33607003320549 | Juvenile Fiction | GRABENS | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
"Outrageous hijinks and nonstop hilarity--five stars!" --Lincoln Peirce, author of the Big Nate series
Life's a vacation when you live in the world's wackiest motel! P.T. and his best friend, Gloria, are getting ready for St. Pete Beach's first-ever Sandapalooza! The Wonderland's biggest rival, the Conch Reef Resort, is doing everything it can to win the sand sculpture contest, but P.T. has bigger problems- The Wonderland has opened a new restaurant--the Banana Shack--and running a restaurant is harder than it looks! And to make matters worse, a royal guest's priceless tiara has gone missing, and the prime suspect is the Wonderland's beloved housekeeper! Can P.T. and Gloria win the contest, keep the restaurant going, and clear Clara's name?
Author Notes
Chris Grabenstein was born in Buffalo, New York on September 2, 1955. He studied journalism and theater at the University of Tennessee and then moved to New York City. For five years, he performed and won awards with some of the city's top Improvisational Comedy troupes. He wrote for Jim Henson's Muppets. In 1986, he and Ronny Venable wrote a TV movie for CBS called The Christmas Gift. He also worked as an advertising executive for close to twenty years.
He won the Anthony Award for best first mystery for his first adult mystery Tilt-a-Whirl. His other novels for adults include Mad Mouse, Whack-a-Mole, Hell Hole, Mind Scrambler and Rolling Thunder. He received another Anthony Award and four Agatha Awards for his work. His books for younger readers include Escape from Mr. Lemonchello's Library, The Island of Dr. Libris, the Treasure Hunters series, the Haunted Mystery series, the Riley Mack series, and the I Funny series written with James Patterson.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Excerpts
Excerpts
"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 n 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. bPete 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. Excerpted from Sandapalooza Shake-Up: Welcome To Wonderland #3 by Chris Grabenstein All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.