Fortune's Magic Farm Suzanne Selfors (best books for 20 year olds txt) 📖

AND BREAKFAST, and another that read SUNNY COVE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. He followed the street called Boggy Lane until he came to its end.

While everyone else had been pleased with the changes in Sunny Cove, one particular group of residents had not—the slugs, which had lost most of their damp places to live. Sage thought it only fitting that one should be provided. So he and Rolo had secretly planted a single clump of Cloud Clover behind the house that stood at the end of Boggy Lane. Above that house, and above that house alone, a permanent cloud hung, dark and fat with endless rain. And so the village slugs had packed their bags and had moved into Mama Lu’s Boardinghouse.

Rolo landed on a windowsill and folded his wings. He pressed his eye to the foggy glass. The observation chair rocked from side to side as a large woman in a blue bathrobe shook an empty salt canister in the air. “SLUUUUG!” she hollered. “Gertie, get me some salt!”

Another woman stood on the kitchen table. The floor glistened with gooey, happy gastropods. “I keep telling you that there ain’t no salt in the market. They don’t allow it no more.”

“SLUUUG! SLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUG!”

Rolo chuckled, for even a raven is blessed with a sense of humor.

He took to the sky once again, speedily making his way past the cove and out to sea. He spotted the seals as they swam powerfully across the water. Nesbitt rode in front, on one of Neptune’s wives. Isabelle and Sage sat in Neptune’s saddle, sea wind blowing through their hair and across their smiling faces as they made their way back to a place that wasn’t supposed to exist. Rolo thought about joining them but decided to fly for a while longer.

The day was just so nice.

For another fun-filled adventure

from Suzanne Selfors, don’t miss

SMELLS LIKE DOG.

Meet Homer Pudding, an ordinary farm boy who’s got big dreams to follow in the footsteps of his famous treasurehunting uncle. But when Uncle Drake disappears, Homer inherits two things: a lazy, droopy dog with no sense of smell, and a mystery. Join Homer and his friends on an adventure as they discover that treasure might be closer than they ever imagined….

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1

Breakfast with the Puddings

What Homer Pudding didn’t know on that breezy Sunday morning, as he carried a pail of fresh goat milk across the yard, was that his life was about to change.

In a big way.

What he did know was this: That the country sky was its usual eggshell blue, that the air was its usual springtime fresh, and that his chores were their usual boring, boring, boring.

For how exciting can it be cleaning up after goats? And that’s what Homer had done for most of his twelve years. Each year his chore list grew longer, taking more time away from the thing that he’d rather do. The one thing. The only thing. But it was not playing football, or riding a bike. Not swimming, or fishing, or building a fort.

If he didn’t have to rake goat poop, or change straw bedding, or chase goats out of the flower bed, Homer Winslow Pudding would have more time to dream about the day when he’d become a famous treasure hunter like his uncle.

“Daydreaming doesn’t have any place on a farm,” his father often told him. “There’s too much work to be done.”

But Homer dreamed anyway.

Mrs. Pudding waved from the kitchen window. She needed the milk for her morning coffee. Homer picked up his pace, his rubber boots kicking up fallen cherry blossoms. As he stumbled across a gnarled root, a white wave splashed over the side of the bucket. Warm goat milk ran down his sleeve and dribbled onto the grass where it was quickly lapped up by the farm’s border collies.

“Careful there,” Mr. Pudding called as he strode up the driveway, gravel crunching beneath his heavy work boots. He tucked the Sunday newspaper under his arm. “Your mother will be right disappointed if she don’t get her milk.”

Homer almost fell over, his legs tangled in a mass of licking dogs. “Go on,” he said. The dogs obeyed. The big one, named Max, scratched at a flea that was doing morning calisthenics on his neck. Max was a working dog, like the others, trained to herd the Puddings’ goats. He even worked on Sundays while city dogs slept in or went on picnics. Every day is a workday on a farm.

And that’s where this story begins—on the Pudding Goat Farm. A prettier place you’d be hard pressed to find. If you perched at the top of one of the cherry trees you’d see a big barn that sagged in the middle as if a giant had sat on it, a little farmhouse built from river rocks, and an old red truck. Look farther and you’d see an endless tapestry of rolling hills, each painted a different hue of spring green. “Heaven on earth,” Mrs. Pudding often said. Homer didn’t agree. Surely in heaven there wouldn’t be so many things to fix and clean and haul.

The dogs stayed outside while Mr. Pudding and Homer slipped off their boots and went into the kitchen. Because the Pudding family always ate breakfast together at the kitchen table, it was the perfect place to share news and ask questions like, Whatcha gonna do at school today? or Who’s gonna take a bath tonight? or Why is that dead squirrel lying on the table?

“Because I’m gonna stuff it.”

“Gwendolyn Maybel Pudding. How many times have I told you not to put dead things on the kitchen table?” Mr. Pudding asked as he hung his cap on a hook.

“I don’t know,” Gwendolyn grumbled, tossing her long brown hair.

Homer set the milk pail on the counter, then washed his hands at the sink. His little brother, who everybody called Squeak, but whose legal name was Pip, tugged at Homer’s pant