BOOK EXCERPT EXCLUSIVE! Through an exclusive arrangement with Assembly Line Publishing, Inc., Blog About Town offers a sneak preview of ASSEMBLY LINE CLASSICS, a new series of original novels aimed at the hot "tween" market. ASSEMBLY LINE CLASSICS offers readers contemporary storytelling by some of the most resourceful young authors in publishing today.

Last week the featured excerpt came from HONEY HANDELBAUM's A SERIES OF FORTUNATE EVENTS, BOOK ONE: CHEERFUL ENDINGS!!!!

Today we are happy to offer you this "sneak peek" at another book in the series.

HOW JAN B. AWOKE ONE MORNING, PUT ON HER CONTACTS, AND SQUASHED HER STUPID BROTHER
(excerpt)

by Candy Naskar


One morning Jan B. woke up in the middle of a horrible dream about gaining 100 pounds by eating just one little Twinkie. She lay on her back, opened her eyes, and saw a little dark thingie on the sheet in front of her. It seemed to have a brown belly and pitifully thin legs sticking up into the air.

"Could this be a dream?" she wondered. It wasn't a dream. Her room, which was not as big as her stupid brother Greg's, still had all four of its light pink walls. Her collection of boy band magazines spread out on her desk--Jan B. was a big fan of boy bands--and above it there hung a picture of Daniel Radcliffe that she had recently cut out of a magazine and housed in a too-cute pink frame. It showed Radcliffe wearing a knit cap and a scarf and sitting upright, raising a wand as if to ward off some evil spirit just beyond Jan's frilly pink pillow.

Jan B. turned to look out the window at the weather. Drops of rain could be heard hitting the pane. They made her feel like staying in bed forever! "What if I slept a little bit longer and forgot all about this dark thingie," she thought, but that was something she was unable to do because she was used to sleeping without a dark thingie on her bed, and under the present circumstances that was impossible. However hard she tried to ignore the dark thingie, she couldn't forget that it was there. She must have tried one thousand times, shutting her eyes tight so that she wouldn't have to see anything, until she stopped because the muscles in her eyelids had started to cramp.

"Oh, God," she thought, "I have a feeling I know what that black thingie is. My stupid older brother Greg must have put it there. I can't even go to sleep without him playing stupid tricks on me. I wish he'd go away!" She reached gingerly for her contacts, pushed herself slowly up on her back towards the headboard so that she could put them in better, finally got a clear look at the dark thingie, and was overcome by a cold shudder.

"Eww," she thought. "A horrible vermin!" It had to be another one of her stupid brother Greg's tricks....


AUTHOR BIO CANDY NASKAR is one of the most talented students at the Robert Musil Academy for Girls in Sacramento, California. She plays flute, sings in the school chorus, and volunteers at the annual charity carnival. She loves her pet canary Chirpy and wishes her stupid brother would leave her alone!

Photo: David Marc Fischer