The Wednesdays

Zusatztext "There is enough of a mystery to keep most readers interested until the very end! and Max is a strong protagonist willing to face his problems head on." — School Library Journal Informationen zum Autor JULIE BOURBEAU has jumped out of airplanes, been swept out to sea, and was married on a Himalayan mountaintop by Tibetan monks. When she grew weary of a lifestyle that required so many vaccinations, she decided to become a writer instead. She still travels (just not as far), now in the company of her young son who, one way or another, inspires all of her tales. She is currently at work on her second book, a YA novel entitled King Of Nowhere. Klappentext Every Wednesday, strange things happen in Max's village. The townsfolk shutter their windows, lock their doors, and hunker down to outwait this plague of peculiarities referred to simply as "the Wednesdays." But Max is too curious for that, and when he accidentally lets the Wednesdays inside, his furious parents cast him out for the rest of the day. Soon he meets the Wednesdays themselves, strange silver-eyed boy-creatures obsessed with playing pranks. Initially he thinks they're quite fun, but they can also be cruel and dangerous. And then Max discovers a terrible secret: he must put an end to the curse of the Wednesdays . . . or become one himself. Chapter 1 Halfway up the steep slope of Mount Tibidabo was a very small village where very strange things happened?.?.?.?but only on Wednesdays. The rest of the week was quite normal, as far as small villages in this day and age go. It was only on Wednesdays that the villagers shuttered their windows, locked their doors, and hunkered down to wait out the oddness, which always ended promptly at midnight. In addition to being punctual, the strange Wednesday happenings were also mostly harmless. Oh, occasionally people stubbed their toes on a piece of furniture that was mysteriously rearranged or lost their footing on suddenly slippery surfaces; once Polly Simmons had to go to the hospital in the city to have her stomach pumped when her tea was unexpectedly switched with her perfume. But even then, Polly was all right in the end, and she later confessed that she had often thought about trying a sip of perfume just to see if it tasted as lovely as it smelled. So, overall, it wasn’t really much of a bother, and since the rest of the week in the village was pleasant enough, the people just shrugged their shoulders and stayed indoors one day out of seven. It was on one of these Wednesdays, which started out no stranger than any other, that things started to become much, much stranger than usual for one boy in particular. Max V. Bernard did not like to stay indoors on Wednesdays. He had no siblings to play with, since his baby brother, Leland, was too young and too ill-tempered to be any fun, and the family pet was a grumpy old cat who did nothing but sleep on the guest room bed. His mother and father spent their Wednesdays drinking lots of coffee, mopping up baby spit, and playing canasta, which in Max’s opinion was truly the world’s most boring card game. Max thought Wednesdays were dreadfully dull. Because Wednesdays in the house were so boring, Max often found the need to bend the rules here and there. As far as he was concerned, being scolded was at least more interesting than playing canasta. So it was that on this particular Wednesday, he was breaking the rules by peeking out of a secret peephole. Although his father carefully sealed up the windows and doors each Tuesday night before bedtime, Max had a few tricks up his sleeve. At the moment, for example, he was hiding in the attic, where he had discovered that one of the slats in the shutters was loose and could be pried open just enough for proper spying. Max was peering through this secret slat with wicked glee as a confused group of tourist...

Product details

• Authors: Jason Beene, Julie Bourbeau
• Assisted by: Jason Beene (Illustration)
• Publisher: Yearling Books
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 7 to 10
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 06.08.2013
• EAN: 9780375872860
• ISBN: 978-0-375-87286-0
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 194 mm x 13 mm
• Subject: Children's and young people's books