Mammoth Books presents The Books Read Free Page A

were all dumb things like how to weave potholders for your mom or build things out of popsicle sticks. I didn’t even know what popsicle sticks were, much less where I could get any. There were some about what daily life was like back in olden times but I already knew about that, and anyway those books had no
story.
    And all the while Myko kept yelling things like, “Whoa! This one has guys with spears and shields and
gods
!” or “Hey, here’s one with a flying carpet and it says it’s got a
thousand
stories!” Why was I the only one stuck in the dumb books shelves?
    I came to the big window at the end and looked out at the view – rooftops, fog, gray dark ocean – and backed away, scared stiff by how high up I was. I was turning around to run back when I saw the biggest book in the world.
    Seriously. It was half as big as I was,
twice
the size of
Barlogio’s Principles of Glassblowing,
it was bound in red leather and there were gold letters along its back. I crouched down and slowly spelled out the words.
    The Complete Collected Adventures of Asterix the Gaul.
    I knew what “Adventures” meant, and it sounded pretty promising. I pulled the book down – it was the heaviest book in the world too – and laid it flat on the floor. When I opened it I caught my breath. I had found the greatest book in the world.
    It was full of colored pictures but there were words too, a lot of them, they were the people in the story talking but you could
see them talk.
I had never seen a comic before. My mom talked sometimes about movies and TV and they must have been like this, I thought, talking pictures. And there was a story. In fact, there were lots of stories. Asterix was this little guy no bigger than me but he had a mustache and a helmet and he lived in this village and there was a wizard with a magic potion and Asterix fought in battles and traveled to all these faraway places and had all these adventures!!! And I could read it all by myself, because when I didn’t know what a word meant I could guess at it from the pictures.
    I settled myself more comfortably on my stomach, propped myself up on my elbows so I wouldn’t crunch my starched ruff, and settled down to read.
    Sometimes the world becomes a perfect place.
     
    Asterix and his friend Obelix had just come to the Forest of the Carnutes when I was jolted back to the world by Myko yelling for me. I rose to my knees and looked around. It was darker now; I hadn’t even realized I’d been pushing my nose closer and closer to the pages as the light had drained away. There were drops of rain hitting the window and I thought about what it would be like running through those dark cold scary streets and getting rained on too.
    I scrambled to my feet and grabbed up my book, gripping it to my chest as I ran. It was even darker when I reached the central room. Myko and Sunny were having a fight when I got there. She was crying. I stopped, astounded to see she’d pulled her skirt off and stuffed it full of books, and she was sitting there with her legs bare to her underpants.
    “We have to travel light and they’re too heavy,” Myko was telling her. “You can’t take all those!”
    “I have to,” she said. “We
need
these books!” She got to her feet and hefted the skirt.
The Olive Fairy Book
fell out. I looked over and saw she’d taken all the colored fairy books. Myko bent down impatiently and grabbed up
The Olive Fairy Book.
He looked at it.
    “It’s stupid,” he said. “Who needs a book about an olive fairy?”
    “You moron, it’s not
about
an olive fairy!” Sunny shrieked. “It’s got all kinds of stories in it! Look!” She grabbed it back from him and opened it and shoved it out again for him to see. I sidled close and looked. She was right: there was a page with the names of all the stories in the book. There were a lot of stories, about knights and magic and strange words. Read one a night, they’d take up a month of winter nights. And every book