Invisible Inkling

When I’m swimming and my overbusy imagination wants to begin zooming around—picturing huge hammocks and drowning kittens and giant water lizards—I put it on hold. I make myself think about swimming, and all the things Inkling has been teaching me.

I didn’t used to be able to do that: make myself think about swimming.

But somehow, now I can.

I rotate my feet. I lift my elbows. I loosen my knees.

Before the eight nights of Hanukkah are over, I am a Cuttlefish.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

I realize not everyone has experienced the awesomeness that is a whoopie pie, so if you’ve turned back here to find out what one is, here ya go: it’s a cake-and-frosting sandwich. Or cake and ice cream, if it’s an ice-cream whoopie pie.

As in the other books about Wolowitz and Inkling, I am fictionalizing my favorite Brooklyn shops, parks, and restaurants. Some places I mention are real, but others are imaginary. I’m also rearranging space so my characters can get around on foot rather than by subway. The Wolowitz family lives in a combination of Park Slope, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens.

Big Round Pumpkin is inspired by Blue Marble: www.bluemarbleicecream.com. Blue Marble serves pumpkin ice cream every fall, and it doesn’t taste like baby food at all. Betty-Ann is entirely made-up, but I got the idea for the drama in this book from eating the wonderful pumpkin ice-cream whoopie pies at One Girl Cookies: www.onegirlcookies.com.

I would like to make a few disclaimers here. First, Hank is not a reliable reporter. I doubt it’s really true about that black mamba eating a parrot, and other things Hank says about snakes are not exactly facts. Second, Inkling is a big liar, and nothing he says about geography or anything else should be taken as true. Third, there’s a heck of a lot to read if you want to safely rear hedgehogs. I did some research, but then I adapted what I learned about them to suit my fictional purposes.

Kim gets his name from a young friend of mine. His uncle won an auction for the chance to have his nephew’s name in my books, and HK was nice enough to say it was okay if his namesake was badly behaved.

Thanks always to Bob for support, and gratitude to Apte for the joke about creamed herring. A big debt and a large bowl of geshmack doughnut to Bray, Kaplan, Siniscalchi, Sun, Polster, Sarver, Gamarra, Mlynowski, Aukin & Aukin & Aukin, and Bliss.

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About the Author and Illustrator

Emily Jenkins is the author of two previous books about Hank and Inkling. She also wrote the chapter books Toys Go Out, Toy Dance Party

, and Toys Come Home, plus a lot of picture books, including Lemonade in Winter, That New Animal, and Skunkdog. She bakes excellent pumpkin bread and, when swimming, wears a purple swim cap and blue goggles. You can visit her online at www.emilyjenkins.com.

Harry Bliss is the New York Times bestselling illustrator of Diary of a Fly, Diary of a Worm, and Diary of a Spider by Doreen Cronin; A Fine, Fine School by Sharon Creech; Which Would You Rather Be? by William Steig; and the first two books in this series, Invisible Inkling and

Dangerous Pumpkins. He is also an award-winning, internationally syndicated cartoonist and cover artist for the New Yorker magazine. Harry Bliss lives in Vermont. You can visit him online at www.harrybliss.com.

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Credits

Cover art © 2013 by Harry Bliss

Copyright

Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

INVISIBLE INKLING: THE WHOOPIE PIE WAR

Text copyright © 2013 by Emily Jenkins

Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Harry Bliss

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jenkins, Emily, date.

The whoopie pie war / Emily Jenkins ; illustrations by Harry Bliss. — 1st ed.

p. cm. — (Invisible Inkling ; [#3])

Summary: “Hank Wolowitz and Inkling, his invisible bandapat friend, try to save the family ice-cream store’s business from a whoopie pie food truck parked outside.” — Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-06-180226-3 (hardcover bdgs : alk. paper)