Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Lin Oliver is the author of the Who Shrunk Daniel Funk series, and the co-author, with Henry Winkler, of the bestselling Hank Zipzer series. She is a writer and producer of movies, books, and television series for children and families. The co-founder and executive director of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and sons. Visit her at linoliver.com.

Stephen Gilpin graduated from the NYC School of Visual Arts where he studied painting and cartooning. He is the illustrator of the Who Shrunk Daniel Funk series and The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy series. Stephen currently lives in Hiawatha, KS. Visit him at sgilpin.com.

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Escape of the Mini-Mummy

Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

Hey, welcome to my prologue.

Don't worry, it's pretty short. I'm just going to tell you three things you need to know before you read this book, and then we're out of here. Ready?

Number One. A diorama is NOT the same as diarrhea.

Let's be very, very clear about this all-important difference. A diorama is in no way related to diarrhea. The two words are not even distant cousins.

A diorama is something that shows a scene that happened in history, like the first guy walking on the moon or the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock. Personally, I like to build my dioramas out of shoe boxes. You know, throw in a couple of Lego guys with swords and maybe some leaves or dirt and bamo-slamo, you've got yourself an instant diorama. Some kids, mostly of the girl variety, go all out with fluorescent paints and pipe cleaners and glitter and feathers and stuff. Take my little sister Goldie. She glued clumps of real broccoli onto poster board to make Robin Hood's forest. And my other sister, Lark, made a herd of African antelopes out of hair from a squirrel's tail.

If you ask me, and I know you didn't, that's diorama insanity.

Now diarrhea, on the other hand, is something entirely different. It doesn't illustrate anything from history, that's for sure. I don't want to gross you out with too many details, because we're only in the prologue and not even in the real book yet. So let me just say that diarrhea involves a toilet and an upset stomach and some highly unusual body sounds.

In this book, you'll never want to confuse a diorama with diarrhea. Enough said.

Number Two. I shrink. Not all the time, but way more than your average sixth grader. Since last Wednesday, I've shrunk to the size of the fourth toe on my left foot seven times. Eight, if you count that time I fell in the toilet, although I refuse to count that because I'm trying to forget it ever happened. Hey, you try swimming in a toilet bowl and see how much you want to remember it.

Number Three. I have a twin brother named Pablo who is exactly as big as the fourth toe on my left foot. He doesn't grow or shrink, just stays his same old toe-sized self. I only discovered him last Wednesday, when I shrunk for the first time. He's been around my whole life, but I never knew it. My Great Granny Nanny, who is the only other person who knows about him, tells me he was born in my ear.

Wait a minute, are you laughing? Cut me a break, will you? I mean, at least try to be a little sensitive to my situation here. If you told me that you had a secret twin brother named Pablo who was the size of your toe and hatched in your ear, I wouldn't laugh.

Okay, maybe I would. But I would try not to.

So there you have it...just like I promised. Three things you need to know and we're done. Prologue over. Listen, I hope it wasn't too funky for you. I've certainly been known to push the funk-o-meter to its limit. But that's how it is when you're Daniel Funk.

Oh yeah, that's me. What's up?

Text copyright © 2008 by Lin Oliver

"Daniel, you're disgusting!" my sister Goldie called out as she ran in the front door, letting it slam hard behind her.

"Thanks, Goldie. Nice to see you, too," I answered in my best be-nice-to-little-sister tone of voice.

I was kicking back on the living room couch, watching some sports highlights on the wide screen, just trying to enjoy my Sunday afternoon. Until the Goldie attack, that is.

"Daniel, we have to talk," Goldie said.

Of all the words in the English language, I think those four -- "we have to talk" -- are my least favorite. People like my sisters (if you can call them people) always say it when I'm in the middle of something great, like a TV show or a video game. And who wants to talk then? Definitely not me.

"Take a load off, Goldie," I said, scrunching my legs up to make a place for her at the end of the couch. "Sit down and check out what happened this week in sports."

I thought my offer was spectacularly nice. Sometimes the nice approach works with Goldie, and you can get her watching TV and nip the "we have to talk" thing in the bud. But lately that hasn't been working so well. Goldie is seven-and-a-half, and now all she wants to do is act like our two older sisters, Robin and Lark. She imitates everything they do. So it wasn't totally surprising when she came up with that "we have to talk" line. They say it at least a hundred times a day. And trust me, what they want to talk about is never anything interesting like baseball stats or classic comic books. Oh no, for them it's code for "Let's criticize Daniel."

My sisters are always telling me that I'm either disgusting or gross or weird or creepy. Or my hair looks like a bird's nest. Or I smell like cheese. Or I'm laughing too loud. Or there's liverwurst stuck in my teeth. Their hobby is pointing out things that are wrong with me. They can't stand to see me relax. Actually, they can't stand to see me, period.

"What do we have to talk about, Goldie?" I asked, without taking my eyes off the TV.

"About how disgusting you are," she said.

I quickly checked myself out to see what was so disgusting.

Could it be my breath? Certainly a possibility. I did have a tuna sandwich on garlic bread for lunch.

My feet? Definite likelihood. I confess, I had chosen my socks from Stinky Sock Mountain, the pile in my room where I keep what I like to call "gently used" socks.

My hair? Also a potential candidate for the disgusting list. I had worked up quite a head of sweat underneath my baseball cap at practice that morning.

Goldie marched herself in front of the TV, placing her body between me and the picture. I tried to look around her, but wherever I moved, she moved too.

"Furthermore...your friends are disgusting," she said, putting her hands on her hips.

I could tell she'd been at a meeting of her Girls Rainbow Club because she had a stupid rainbow painted on her cheek. Some club. A bunch of seven-year-old girls sit around by the canals where we live in Venice, California, and do rainbow dances and wear rainbow capes and take rainbow oaths. And they call that fun?

If you ask me, and I know you didn't, I think most girls' clubs are stupid. Clubs should have a point. Like, I'm in an after-school Simpsons Club, where my friends and I watch classic episodes of The Simpsons and eat snickerdoodle cookies. Now, that has a purpose. That's what I call a club.

"Be specific, Goldie. Exactly which of my friends is disgusting?"

"Your buddy, Vu. I just saw him and he said to tell you he's coming over soon."

Vu Tran is my best friend, who lives down the street. Most days, Goldie has a gigantic crush on him, so I was surprised that suddenly she thought he was disgusting. I mean, he does put a lot of gel in his hair to make it stick straight up, but other than that, I couldn't think of anything about him that was disgusting. I happen to know his parents make him wash his hands before and after every meal.

"What's so disgusting about Vu coming over?"

"He said he was coming here to work on your diarrhea. That is so totally disgusting."

"He didn't say that, Goldie."

"He did too. He looked right at me and said you guys were making some diarrhea together."

Okay, friends. Here's where I'm going to ask you to remember the prologue you just read, and the first very important point I made in it. If you recall, I...