Laugh Out Loud

Chapter 2

My Marvelous Visitors

Okay, here’s how my book company got started.

Late one summer night, I went walking with my dog, Quixote, which, by the way is pronounced KEY-HO-TAY. That’s right. I named him after the lead character from the classic Spanish novel The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. (Don’t ask me how to pronounce his last name. I’m still trying to learn how to say ¿Dónde está el baño?) It’s all about this guy who is an epic dreamer and fights windmills. He’s kind of a weird dude.

Anyway, we weren’t too far from our house in San Jose, California, and I was reading The Marvels by Brian Selznick.

Yep. I love books so much I can walk and read at the same time.

Unless there is an open manhole. Or a curb. Curbs are tough.

Anyway, have you read The Marvels? The first half is told completely in pencil drawings: Crashing waves are about to sink the Kraken, a whaling ship, where our hero, Billy Marvel, is putting on a show for the sailors.

Man, I was totally lost in Mr. Selznick’s amazing tale.

So lost, I didn’t notice the creepy clump of trees Quixote and I had just wandered into.

We kept walking deeper and deeper into the darkness, because I kept falling deeper and deeper into Brian Selznick’s swirling tale of adventure.

Hey, when I’m into a book, I crawl in all the way!

On the illustrated pages, lightning flashed and thunder boomed. Billy was about to be swept overboard as the ship sank!

I could hear the wooden beams of the Kraken creaking and groaning as the waves pounded its sides.

Splinters and wood chips showered down all around me.

(Yeah, actual wood stuff falling from the sky was a little weird. Even for a guy who totally lives in his imagination like me.)

Then the crackling and snapping grew louder. It sounded like trees were exploding all around me! Seconds later, the splintering sounds were blasted away by the humongous rumbling THWUMP and WARBLE of unearthly engines.

The darkness was replaced by a dusty shaft of bright white light.

I finally looked up from my book. Quixote looked up, too. Then he whimpered and tucked his tail between his legs.

Because the two of us were standing right where the hovering alien spaceship wanted to land.

Chapter 3

Greetings, People Not of Earth

The flying saucer snapped off a few more branches as it completed its slow descent to the ground and settled with a soft, airy KOOSH!

Quixote whined and grumbled. I think he wanted to go home.

Not me. I wanted to see who (or what) was inside the spaceship!

A side door ZHURRR-WHOOSHed open. A gangplank slid forward. And the parade started! Just about every creature from every space story ever told was crammed on board that one ship!

It was like a minivan hauling the all-star soccer team from all the stars.

Some I recognized from movies and TV. Others were from books, like Mrs. Whatsit from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and Hilo from The Boy Who Crashed to Earth by Judd Winick.

They were all extremely friendly, so we spent the night sitting around, talking.

The space creatures all thought some of the things we earthlings had were weird. Like spray cheese in a can. And silly string in a can. And joke-store springy snakes that jump out of cans.

Yes, they were seriously hung up on cans. Maybe because they spend so much time sealed up inside spaceships.

And farts. None of them understood farts.

“Is this some kind of internal gas-powered jet propulsion you employ after eating beans?” they wondered.

That’s when a guy with a bubble-brain head and ginormous bug eyes spoke up. I wasn’t exactly sure what movie or book he came from. Probably one like The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells where the aliens aren’t all that cute and cuddly.

“We have a very important message for the planet Earth,” the alien said in a mechanical voice (he sounded like he ate computer chips for lunch every day). “Extremely, enormously, urgently important.”

Yep, this was first contact, the very first official words humans had ever received from outer space, and I was going to be the human doing all the receiving!

Roughly translated, what the big head basically said was “Your planet is in really, really, really deep doo-doo.”

(I can’t repeat the actual words the spaceman used. Moms and teachers don’t like that kind of language. If I used the actual words, they wouldn’t let kids read this book, and if that happened, you’d miss a really cool story.)

“The people of earth,” the space ambassador continued, “must read more, and learn more, and think a whole lot more. Or else.”

I gulped a little. Quixote whimpered again.

“You must assist your fellow earthlings in this effort!” said another one of the aliens. “You must open a book company, Jimmy!”

“Do this you must,” added Yoda.

“Or else,” said Marvin the Martian.

And he was aiming his ray gun straight at me!

Chapter 4

Meanwhile, Back in Reality…

Okay, okay, okay.

You’ve probably already figured out that this wasn’t how JIMMY Books got started. It wasn’t because aliens landed in California and told me I had to do it to save the planet.

But it shows you just how much I love stories.

Love, love, love ’em!

You also know that I did, eventually, start JIMMY Books. I mean, you’re reading a JIMMY Book, right? If I’d never started the company we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

So here’s how it really happened. The truth. You could shelve this next bit in the nonfiction section because it’s the real deal. Except for where I might exaggerate. Or make up another story for the fun of it. But even then it’s still mostly true.

Like I said before all those aliens landed, everyone should have a dream. Maybe a couple of dreams. My dream was to start an amazing book company while I was still a kid. That’s right. This wasn’t going to be one of those “when I grow up, I wanna” kind of dreams they make you write about in middle school essays.

Nope. I wanted to create a book company for kids, by kids, and of kids. That was my dream.

The girl who lived next door? She dreamed about leaving her room and playing with all the kids she watched out her window every day.

Her name was Madison. She was severely asthmatic and had a bunch of other health problems with complicated names that sound weirder than the alien word for “deep doo-doo.”

The grown-ups all called my next-door neighbor “sickly.”

I just called her Maddie.

Chapter 5

Working on a Dream

I figured there were tons of kids just like Maddie all over the world.

Not that they were sick all the time. But they were hungry—maybe even starving—for fun and exciting books.

That meant I would need to make lots and lots of books. But how could I pull it off? Don’t forget, I was just a kid. Still am. But being a kid has its advantages. For one thing, we eat a lot of delicious sugary snacks. Sugar will keep your mind buzzing. Plus, kids wake up earlier than adults. That’s why they invented cartoons, which we watch while eating sugary cereal. Talk about a mental buzz.

After brainstorming for weeks, it was time to start putting my thoughts down on paper. I drew sketches whenever and wherever I could of what I wanted my book company to look like.

By the way, drawing while walking gets easier with practice.

Still, I don’t recommend doing it while riding a bike or skateboarding. You bump into stuff. Stuff like fire hydrants and lamp poles.

I was obsessed.

All the kids at school were totally into my dream, too.

“I want to work at your book company!” said my good friend Chris Grabbetts. “I like writing.”

“You mean you have fun making up stories, too?”

“Sometimes. But mostly, I like writing. Especially cursive. I’m thinking about taking up calligraphy, except I don’t know how to spell it.” Like always, Chris was joking around.

“Instead of freight elevators, you need a Ferris wheel to move books from one floor to the other,” suggested my bud Raphael Katchadopoulos, whom everybody calls Rafe. He’s pretty good with markers and a sketchpad so he doodled a quick visual. I love, love, loved it.

“You also need a bowling alley,” said Chris.

I raised both eyebrows. “A bowling alley?”

He shrugged. “I like to bowl.”

“I’ll put a lane over here near the Ping-Pong and foosball tables,” said Rafe, his pen scribbling across the page.

Chapter 6

Meet the ’Rents

So this is Mom and Dad.

Dad’s a big-time CPA, a certified public accountant. That means he crunches numbers for other people and does their taxes for them. Mom is a hotshot lawyer. The kind that handles tax stuff. I sometimes wonder if Mom and Dad met on April fifteenth. You know—tax day.

Mom never goes to court or does anything dramatic like, say, the awesome Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Instead of drama and excitement, my parents both have huge, boxy briefcases filled with paper. Not books. Paper. Reams and reams of it. Dad’s papers are covered in lines, grids, graphs, and numbers. Mom’s have Post-it notes sticking out between the pages.

You know how most grown-ups work nine to five? My mom and dad work five to nine. That’s right. They head to their offices at 5 a.m. and don’t come home until 9 p.m., just in time to ask me if I finished my homework and say a quick good night.

I sometimes wondered if I was actually an orphan, like some of my favorite characters in books. Harry Potter. Anne Shirley. Oliver Twist. Cinderella.

In fact, I had a hunch that my real parents had been eaten by an angry rhinoceros so the couple I called my mother and father were actually my aunt Sponge and uncle Spiker. I kept waiting for an enormous enchanted orange to grow on a barren orange tree in our backyard so I could fly in it like a hot-air balloon, meet a bunch of friendly talking bugs, and set sail for New York City!

But then I realized, that wasn’t my story. It was James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl—I just changed the fruit because I’d had orange juice for breakfast.

Yep, there are a lot of orphans in books. Comic books, too. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, Robin, Aquagirl—all those superheroes without any ’rents.

Sometimes, that’s how I felt.

Minus the X-ray vision or web-slinging.

My superpower?

Reading!

Chapter 7

Sharing My Dream

Late one night, after Mom and Dad had both been home for like thirty minutes, I decided to show them my dream on paper.

Actually, it was more like a dream on papers. I kept having more and more great ideas. So I taped all the different sketches together in one ginormous quilt, which I rolled up and carried into the dining room.

It was maybe ten o’clock. They were both sitting at the table, not eating. Cardboard and Styrofoam cartons of cold takeout food sat next to their stacks of papers.

I tiptoed into the room with my tube of taped-together sketches.

“Mom? Dad?” I said. “I want to show you something.”

“Is it your homework?” asked Dad. “Because it’s tax season, Jimmy, and I really need to finish these forms for Ferguson Fine Furniture before I can even look at your algebra equations.”