The Island of Dr. Libris by Chris Grabenstein Read Free Book Online Page A

really.”
    “I canoed out there once. Took me all day. I’m not too good with canoeing, either. Anyway, when I hiked up the path, the gate thing was locked. Dr. Libris wouldn’t ever give me the key.”
    “You know Dr. Libris?”
    “Sure. I’ve spent every summer up here for ten years.”
    Billy wondered if Walter might know a thing or two about the mysterious professor and the even more mysterious stuff happening on his island.
    He also wondered if Dr. Libris had ever dropped Walter any hints about where he had hidden his treasure.
    “So, where is this Red Barn?” Billy asked.
    “Not too far. We can bike it.”
    “I don’t have a bike.”
    “That’s okay. You can borrow one of ours. We’ve got extra helmets, too.”
    “Cool. Let me run inside and tell my mom where we’re going.”
    “Great. And when we’re done with our waffle fries, I’ll tell
you
all about Dr. Libris.”

“Your cottage is amazing,” said Billy.
    “Thanks,” said Walter. “My dad’s an engineer. He knows how to take wacky ideas and actually make them work.”
    One section of the lake cottage had columns like a miniature White House; another, made out of canvas, looked like a circus tent; still another was an overturned tugboat, with the curved hull as the roof. And of course there was the thirty-foot-tall castle tower.
    “My dad designed it all,” Walter said proudly. “We call it the Hodgepodge Lodge. Every summer, he comes up with something new. The castle tower? He did that the year Alyssa was born, because she’s his princess.”
    “What’s he working on this year?”
    “A moat.”
    Half a dozen bikes were leaned up against theHodgepodge Lodge’s deck. Billy strapped on a helmet and grabbed a bike with a basket attached to the handlebars. When his mom had heard that he and Walter were heading to the Red Barn, she had given him money to pick up a blueberry pie. The basket would make bringing it home easier.
    Walter and Billy hopped onto their bikes and headed for the gravel road.
    The ride was extremely rickety.
    “I bent my frame last week when I crashed my bike into the only car in the Red Barn parking lot,” said Walter. “I’m not the world’s best bicyclist.”
    Billy’s cycling skills weren’t much better than Walter’s, but he kept at it.
    “So,” he asked when he finally felt like he wouldn’t tip over, “have you ever been inside Dr. Libris’s study?”
    “You mean the room with the Charles Dickens bookcase?”
    “What?”
    “That big bookcase with all the carvings? It used to belong to Charles Dickens, the guy who wrote that book about Scrooge.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Well, that’s what Dr. Libris told me. Oh, get this—he said some of the shelves came from planks taken out of Scheherazade’s trunk. She’s the one who had to tell stories for a thousand and one nights and came up with ‘Aladdin’ on night number nine hundred and forty-two. And those carvings? They were all done by Geppetto.”
    “The wood-carver who created Pinocchio?”
    “Yuh-huh.”
    “But
Pinocchio
’s just a story,” said Billy. “It’s not real.”
    “That’s exactly what
I
told Dr. Libris! When I did, he shook his head and said I had ‘no imagination whatsoever.’ ”
    “That’s awful.”
    “Yeah. Dr. Libris can be kind of crabby. That’s why I never rowed out to his island except that one time. Didn’t want him going all grumpy on me.”
    They reached Route 17.
    “Stick to the shoulder,” said Walter. “It’s safer.”
    They passed a roadside stand selling fresh corn and pulled into the parking lot of a big barn-shaped building painted red.
    “Guess this is the Red Barn?” said Billy.
    “Yep!” said Walter, who seemed to never stop smiling. “Good name for it, huh?”
    Billy grinned. He liked this guy.
    They propped their bikes up against the white picket fence and went inside.
    Billy and Walter shared a plate of waffle fries and then placed an order for a whole blueberry pie.
    While the