Please Don't Eat the Children

by Greenburg, Dan

• ISBN13: 9780152060473
• ISBN10: 0152060472
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-04-01
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

Wally and Cheyenne Shluffmuffin fall back into the clutches of the show-tune happy Hortense Jolly at the Jolly Days Orphanage in this seventh book of the deliciously disturbing Dripping Fang series. Illustrations.

Author Biography

DAN GREENBURG is the creator of the enormously popular Zack Files series of middle grade novels as well as the author of a number of bestselling adult books, the best-known of which is How to Be a Jewish Mother. He lives in New York.
SCOTT M. FISCHER illustrated Geraldine McCaughrean's Peter Pan in Scarlet and has also created art for Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. He lives in upstate New York.

Table of Contents

The Adopters Are Coming! The Adopters Are Coming!

Hello, You Must Be Going

In Some Cases Your Loan Can Even Be Approved If You Have No Credit at All or If You Have Even Been Convicted of Armed Robbery

It Turns Out You Can Go Home Again

The Vampire Movie Sounds Interesting, But the Part Sucks

The Adoption Process Can Often Be Such a Heartache

What Is This Thing You’ve Got Against Ghouls?

We’d Like You to Consider a Few of the Advantages of Eternal Life

It’s Enough to Make an Insect Puke

I’m Sorry, But Burping the Alphabet Is Not on Our List of Approved Artistic Achievements

For Conspiracies Involving Giant Mealworms You Need to Go to a Different Department

You Folks Have Been a Great Audience—I’ll Be Here All Week

School for Mutants

The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend

Eating Children: A Matter of Conscience?

You May Be On to Something Very Big

There Seems to Be a Slight Problem with Your Credit Report

A Fatal Sneeze

Waiter, There’s an Orphan in My Soup

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Chapter 1The Adopters Are Coming! The Adopters Are Coming!Cheyenne, Wally, fabulous news! cried Hortense Jolly, owner of the Jolly Days Orphanage. I have people in the visiting room who might be willing to adopt you. And guess what! They even live in Dripping Fang Forest, a place you already know and love!The Shluffmuffin twins were on their hands and knees on the kitchen floor, scrubbing mung from between the tiles with ammonia and boiling water.We know Dripping Fang Forest, said Wally, his eyes smarting from ammonia fumes, but we dont love it, Miss Jolly. And we dont need anyone to adopt us. We already have a perfectly good father.But, darling, you know how the Child Welfare Bureau feels about vampire dads who cant support their children, said Hortense. Why do you think they took you away from him and brought you back here? And why wont anybody give your father a job?Employers have a stupid prejudice against the living dead, said Cheyenne. Poor Dad. Its not his fault he doesnt have a pulse. He didnt ask to drown in a Porta Potti. She sneezed and blew her nose into a tissue.We can talk about all this later, children, said Hortense, shepherding them briskly out of the kitchen. Right now I want you to get into that visiting room and charm the Stumpfs.What if we hate the Stumpfs? asked Wally. Will you force us to let them adopt us?Of course not, said Hortense. Not if you hate them.You promise? asked Cheyenne, sneezing again. On your word of honor?I promise on my word of honor, okay? said Hortense with a weary smile. Now get into that visiting room and be charming.The first thing Cheyenne and Wally noticed about the couple in the visiting room was their teeth. They were yellow and triangular, like a sharks, and extremely sharp looking. Did their teeth grow that way naturally, Wally wondered, or did they file them into points?The second thing they noticed about the couple was how fat they were. Not pleasantly chubby like The Pillsbury Doughboy, but grossly, waddlingly obese, like hippos. It looked as though heavy bags of water had been glued to their bodies under their clothes.Mr. and Mrs. Stumpf, said Hortense, may I present the Shluffmuffin twins, Cheyenne and Wally. Theyre excellent dishwashers, pot scrubbers, and floor waxers. They do windows, and theyve had all their shots.Oh my, said Mrs. Stumpf, they look lovely. But so skinny. What do you feed these poor things?Mrs. Stumpf had greasy skin, especially around her mouth, and she smelled vaguely of rancid cooking oil.Madam, said Hortense, our chef, Mauricewho, Im proud to say, was trained at the world-famous Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, Franceprepares these orphans only the finest of gourmet meals. For example, for breakfast today he made them fluffy souffls with caramelized apples, hot cocoa topped with crme frache, and individual puff pastries with amusing little faces made out of chocolate chips, which he began preparing before the sun was even up.Wally had to force

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Excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Children by Dan Greenburg
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