Adventure According to Humphrey

Table of Contents

 

 

 

For more
Humphrey
adventures, look for
The World
According to Humphrey
Friendship
According to Humphrey
Trouble
According to Humphrey
Surprises
According to Humphrey

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.
Published by The Penguin Group.
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

Copyright © 2009 by Betty G. Birney.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.
Birney, Betty G. Adventure according to Humphrey / Betty G. Birney. p. cm.
Summary: Humphrey the classroom hamster has adventures going to the library, learning
about the ocean, and sailing across a pond on a sailboat. [1. Hamsters—Fiction.
2. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.B5229Ad 2009 [Fic]—dc22 2008002347

eISBN : 978-1-440-69934-4

With unsqueakable gratitude,
to my adventurous agent, Nancy Gallt

G
uess what
I
did this weekend!” Heidi Hopper blurted out one sunny Monday morning.

As usual, my friends in Room 26 of Longfellow School had come back to class with wonderful stories about what they’d done over the weekend.

“Raise-Your-Hand-Heidi, please,” said Mrs. Brisbane. Heidi had been better about speaking out of turn lately, but she still slipped up once in a while. After all, she’s only human.

When Heidi raised her hand, Mrs. Brisbane asked, “Okay, what did you do this weekend?”

“We went on a hike to a cave and waded through an underground stream,” Heidi proudly explained.

I was so amazed, I almost fell off my wheel. (That’s what happens when you stop spinning too quickly.) A cave and an underground stream? Now that was an adventure!

“Sounds like quite an adventure,” Mrs. Brisbane agreed. Then she noticed all the other hands waving in the air. “It looks as if a lot of you had adventures.”

Oh, yes, they had! Lower-Your-Voice-A.J. and Wait-for-the-Bell-Garth had gone bicycling. Miranda Golden (whom I think of as Golden-Miranda because she’s an almost perfect human) visited the zoo, where many large and scary animals live. Sit-Still-Seth had gone horseback riding.

“I had Humphrey at
my
house,” I-Heard-That-Kirk Chen proudly announced. “We had an amazing time. Right, Richie?”

“What?” asked Repeat-It-Please-Richie Rinaldi.

“With Humphrey. At my house,” Kirk repeated.

“Yes!” Richie reached across the aisle and high-fived Kirk.

It was true. I’d had a great weekend at Kirk’s. I got to watch TV and listen to people talk. Richie came over, too, but whenever he and Kirk did something FUN-FUN-FUN, like going outside to fly a kite or toss a ball around, they left me behind. I know that small furry creatures don’t usually do things like that, but as a classroom hamster who goes home with a different student each weekend, I must admit I sometimes feel a little left out. After all, I’m always ready to help my friends (or even my teacher or principal) solve a problem. It would be nice if they let me share in their adventures, too.

Don’t get me wrong. People have been very nice to me. But ever since the day I left Pet-O-Rama and came to Room 26, I’ve been trying to understand human behavior. It’s been interesting . . . but it hasn’t been easy.

I’m luckier than Og the Frog, who is the other classroom pet. He doesn’t need to be fed as often as I do and usually spends weekends alone in Room 26. He doesn’t seem to mind, but then, it’s not easy to understand frog behavior, either.

While I was thinking about my friends’ adventures, I lost track of what was happening in class for a moment. Mrs. Brisbane was giving us our new vocabulary words for the week and, oh, what words they were! Beautiful words, like
nautical
,
treasure
, and
squall
, which Mrs. Brisbane said was a violent gust of wind. They were the best vocabulary words I’d heard since I started school back in September, and I quickly jotted them down in the tiny notebook I keep hidden behind the mirror in my cage.

Ms. Mac, the substitute teacher who first brought me to Room 26, gave me the notebook before she moved to far-off Brazil. No one else knew I had it. No one knew that I had learned to read and write, either.

My fellow classmates seemed to enjoy the vocabulary words, too. Kirk, the class clown, shouted out, “Squall! Squall!” Then he took a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks and loudly blew out all the air like a big gust of wind. Stop-Giggling-Gail Morgenstern giggled, but just about everything made her laugh.

The words reminded me of a pirate movie we watched at Kirk’s house. Some of the pirates were SCARY-SCARY-SCARY, but it was exciting to see the big ships with their sails flying in the wind. How I’d love to feel the sea breeze ruffling through my fur! And to hear the pirates saying things like, “Avast, matey,” and, “Land ho!” I’m not sure what those things mean, but they sound thrilling!

To top it all off, the pirates were fighting with other pirates over buried treasure. I sometimes hide food to save for the future, but the pirates hid gold and silver and shiny jewels. Buried treasure sounds like the most wonderful thing on earth!

I do manage to have adventures of my own, especially when I escape from my cage. I can easily do that because it has a lock-that-doesn’t-lock. It looks firmly closed, but I can jiggle it open, get out of my cage to help my friends and return without anyone knowing it. Most of my exploits have been in houses, apartments or in Room 26, but now that I’d been around humans for a while, I longed for bigger adventures.

Lower-Your-Voice-A.J. must have read my mind. (How does he do that?)

“Mrs. Brisbane, can we put Humphrey in his hamster ball?” he yelled out.

“A.J., did I call on you?” Mrs. Brisbane asked.

“Sorry,” said A.J., lowering his voice. “But may we, please?”

Our teacher glanced over at my cage. “I guess he would like a break from his cage,” she said. Maybe she could read my mind, too.

Although I hadn’t had my hamster ball for long, I loved rolling up and down the aisles of Room 26. You can learn a lot from studying the floor of a classroom. You can find out who is messy (Richie, Mandy) or who is twitchy (Seth, Art). You can even find out who is growing the fastest by seeing whose jeans are a little short (Garth, Sayeh).

That day, I rolled up and down the aisles of Room 26 at a relaxing pace. The good thing is, I can go where I want to unless Mrs. Brisbane stops me. The bad thing is, it’s a little hard to hear inside the ball, especially when I’m daydreaming about adventures. Especially adventures on a boat, in the water, on the—

“Ocean,” Mrs. Brisbane said, and I heard her quite clearly.

“In the library,” she added.

Maybe I didn’t hear her clearly after all. I knew that oceans were VERY-VERY-VERY large bodies of water. And I knew that the library was a place where my friends went to get books. In truth, I’d never seen an ocean or a library, even though there was one right down the hall. A library, that is. (There was no ocean at Longfellow School, at least as far as I knew.)

As I rolled up the aisle to hear better, I saw Mrs. Brisbane look at her watch. There’s a big clock on the wall, but Mrs. Brisbane still checked her watch a lot.

“It’s time to go right now,” she announced.

I wasn’t sure whether she was going to the ocean or to the library or maybe both places, but I was sure that I wanted to go, too.

“Mr. Fish will be waiting,” she added.

Mr. Fish? She
must
have been talking about the ocean. I speeded up my hamster ball, spinning my way right up to Mrs. Brisbane’s feet.

“Me too! Me too!” I squeaked.

Mrs. Brisbane looked down at me. Because my hamster ball is yellow, she looked all yellow, too. Everyone did.

“Not you, Humphrey,” she told me. “You’ll have to go back to your cage.”

There was a loud groan from my classmates. I think every single one of them groaned.

“We can’t take Humphrey to the library,” Mrs. Brisbane insisted. “What would he do?”

Miranda—dear Golden-Miranda—raised her hand and the teacher called on her.

“He wouldn’t hurt anything,” she said. “He could stay in his hamster ball.”

Wait-for-the-Bell-Garth Tugwell spoke up, too. “He’s never been to the library before.”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Brisbane. “Just keep an eye on him.”

And that was it! As Garth picked up my hamster ball, I realized that Og would be left behind. Since he spends a lot of time in water, he’d probably enjoy meeting someone called Mr. Fish, too.

“Sorry you can’t come, Og!” I squeaked.

I wasn’t sure if he could hear me through the hamster ball. Also, Og doesn’t have any ears that I can see, although he seems to hear just fine.

My friends lined up and marched down the hall toward the library.

“You have to be quiet in the library, Humphrey Dumpty,” A.J. bellowed. “And you can’t check out books without a card.”

I was too busy trying to stay upright to figure out what kind of card I needed. I know Garth tried to hold the ball steady, but it was a bumpy trip. Even if I felt a little queasy and uneasy, it was well worth the trouble because the library was a HUGE-HUGE-HUGE room lined with colorful shelves.