Free Akiko and the Great Wall of Trudd by Mark Crilley Page B

a matter of seconds. I took one last look at the firelight flickering across the beach as my eyelids slowly dropped over my eyes.
    It was time to rest. We had a
very
big day ahead of us.

SEE WHERE IT ALL BEGAN:
    Join Akiko and her crew on the Planet Smoo!
    When fourth-grader Akiko comes home from school one day, she finds an envelope waiting for her. It has no stamp or return address and contains a very strange message. . . .
    At first Akiko thinks the message is a joke, but before she knows it, she’s heading a rescue mission to find the King of Smoo’s kidnapped son, Prince Froptoppit. Akiko, the head of a rescue mission? She’s too afraid to be on the school’s safety patrol!
    Read the following excerpt from
Akiko on the Planet Smoo
and see how the adventure began.
    Excerpts from
Akiko on the Planet Smoo
and
Akiko in the Sprubly Islands
copyright © 2000 by Mark Crilley
    Akiko on the Planet Smoo
and
Akiko in the Sprubly Islands
    Published by Delacorte Press
    an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
    a division of Random House, Inc.
    1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036
    Appears by arrangement with Delacorte Press
    All rights reserved

My name is Akiko. This is the story of the adventure I had a few months ago when I went to the planet Smoo. I know it’s kind of hard to believe, but it really did happen. I swear.
    I’d better go back to the beginning: the day I got the letter.
    It was a warm, sunny day. There were only about five weeks left before summer vacation, and kids at school were already itching to get out. Everybody was talking about how they’d be going to camp, or some really cool amusement park, or whatever. Me, I knew I’d be staying right here in Middleton all summer, which was just fine by me. My dad works at a company where they hardly ever get long vacations, so my mom and I have kind of gotten used to it.
    Anyway, it was after school and my best friend, Melissa, and I had just walked home together as always. Most of the other kids get picked up by their parents or take the bus, but Melissa and I live close enough to walk to school every day. We both live just a few blocks away in this big apartment building that must have been built about a hundred years ago. Actually I think it used to be an office building or something, but then somebody cleaned it up and turned it into this fancy new apartment building. It’s all red bricks and tall windows, with a big black fire escape in the back. My parents say they’d rather live somewhere out in the suburbs, but my dad has to be near his office downtown.
    Melissa lives on the sixth floor but she usually comes up with me to the seventeenth floor after school. She’s got three younger brothers and has to share her bedroom with one of them, so she doesn’t get a whole lot of privacy. I’m an only child and I’ve got a pretty big bedroom all to myself, so that’s where Melissa and I spend a lot of our time.
    On that day we were in my room as usual, listening to the radio and trying our best to make some decent card houses. Melissa was telling me how cool it would be if I became the new captain of the fourth-grade safety patrol.
    “Come on, Akiko, it’ll be good for you,” she said. “I practically promised Mrs. Miller that you’d do it.”
    “Melissa, why can’t somebody
else
be in charge of the safety patrol?” I replied. “I’m no good at that kind of stuff. Remember what happened when Mrs. Antwerp gave me the lead role in the Christmas show?”
    Melissa usually knows how to make me feel better about things, but even she had to admit last year’s Christmas show was a big disaster.
    “That was different, Akiko,” she insisted. “Mrs. Antwerp had no idea you were going to get stage fright like that.”
    “It was worse than stage fright, Melissa,” I said. “I can’t believe I actually forgot the words to ‘Jingle Bells’.”
    “This isn’t the Christmas show,” she said. “You don’t have to memorize any words to be in