Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder

JO NESBØ

ILLUSTRATED BY
mike lowery

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,

or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are

the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons,

living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ALADDIN

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

First Aladdin hardcover edition January 2010

Copyright © 2007 by H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nygaard), Oslo

Translation copyright © 2010 by Tara Chace

Originally published in Norway in 2007 as
Doktor Proktor's Prompepulvet
by H. Aschehoug & Co.

First US Edition 2010

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Designed by Karin Paprocki

The text of this book was set in Perpetua Regular.

Manufactured in the United States of America

1109 FFG

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nesbø, Jo, 1960–

[Doktor Proktors prompepulvet. English]

Doctor Proctor's fart powder / by Jo Nesbø ; illustrated by Mike Lowery. — 1st Aladdin hardcover ed.

p. cm.

Summary: New friends Nilly and Lisa help eccentric professor Doctor Proctor to develop

his latest invention, a powder that makes one fart, making them very popular at school,

but someone is planning to steal the industrial-strength formula for evil purposes.

ISBN 978-1-4169-7972-2

[1. Inventors—Fiction. 2. Eccentrics and eccentricities—Fiction. 3. Flatulence—Fiction.

4. Friendship—Fiction. 5. Bullies—Fiction. 6. Oslo (Norway)—Fiction. 7. Norway—Fiction.]

I. Lowery, Mike, ill. II. Title.

PZ7.N43825Doc 2010   [Fic]—dc22   2009027204

ISBN 978-1-4391-5606-3 (eBook)

The New Neighbor

IT WAS MAY, and once the sun had shone for a while on Japan, Russia, and Sweden, it came up over Oslo—the very small capital city of a very small country called Norway. The sun got right to work shining on the yellow and fairly small palace that was
home to the king, who didn't rule over enough for it to amount to anything, and on Akershus Fortress. There it shone on the old cannons that were aimed out over the Oslo Fjord, through the window into the Commandant's office, and onto the most remote of all the doors. The door that ultimately led to the city's most feared jail cell, the Dungeon of the Dead, where only the most dangerous and worst criminals were kept. The cell was empty, apart from a
Rattus norvegicus
, a little Norwegian rat that was taking its morning bath in the toilet.

The sun rose a tiny little bit higher and shone on some children in a school marching band who had practiced waking up very early and putting on uniforms that itched, and who were now practicing marching and playing almost in time. Because soon it would be the seventeenth of May, Norwegian Independence Day, and that was the day when all the school marching bands in the whole small country
would get up very early, put on uniforms that itched, and play almost in time.

And the sun climbed a tiny little bit higher and shone on the wooden wharves on the Oslo Fjord, where a ship from Shanghai, China, had just docked. The wharf planks swayed and creaked from all the busy feet running back and forth unloading goods from the ship. Some of the sun's rays made their way between the planks and down under the wharf to a sewer pipe that stuck out into the water.

And one single ray of sunlight made its way into the darkness of the sewer pipe and made something in there gleam. Something white, wet, and very sharp. Something that bore a nasty resemblance to a row of teeth. And if you knew something about reptiles, but were otherwise very dumb, you might have thought that what you were seeing were the eighteen fangs found in the jaws of the world's biggest and most feared constrictor. The anaconda. But nobody's that
dumb. Because anacondas live in the jungle, in rivers like the Amazon in Brazil, and not in the sewer pipes running every which way beneath the small, peaceful northerly city called Oslo. An anaconda in the sewer? Eighteen yards of constricting muscles, a jaw the size of an inflatable swim ring, and teeth like upside-down ice-cream cones? Ha, ha! Yeah, right, that would've been a sight!

And now the sun was starting to shine on a quiet street called Cannon Avenue. Some of the sun's rays shone on a red house there, where the Commandant of Akershus Fortress was eating breakfast with his wife and their daughter, Lisa. And the rays shone on the yellow house on the other side of the street, where Lisa's best friend used to live. But her best friend had just moved to a town called Sarpsborg, and seeing the yellow house empty made Lisa feel even lonelier than she had before her best friend had left. Because there wasn't anyone for Lisa to play with on Cannon
Avenue. The only other kids in the neighborhood were Truls and Trym Trane. They were the twins who lived in the big house with the three garages at the bottom of the hill, and they were two years older than Lisa. In the winter they threw rock-hard snowballs at her little red-haired head. And when she asked if they wanted to play, they pushed her down into the snow. And with icy mittens they rubbed snow into her face while christening her Greasy Lisa, Flatu-Lisa, or Commandant's Debutante.

And now maybe you're thinking that Lisa should've mentioned this to Truls and Trym's parents so they would rein the boys in. But that's because you don't know Truls and Trym's father, Mr. Trane. Mr. Trane was a fat and angry man, even fatter than Lisa's father and way, way angrier. And at least ten times as rich. And because he was so rich, Mr. Trane didn't think anyone had any business coming and telling him anything whatsoever, and especially not how he ought
to be raising his boys! The reason Mr. Trane was so rich was that he had once stolen an invention from a poor inventor. The invention was a very hard, very mysterious, and very secret material that was used, among other things, on prison doors to make prisons absolutely escape-proof. Mr. Trane had used the money he'd made from the invention to build the big house with the three garages, and to buy a Hummer. A Hummer is a big, angry car that was made to use in wars and that took up almost the whole road when Mr. Trane drove up Cannon Avenue. Hummers are also awful polluters. But Mr. Trane didn't care, because he liked big, angry cars. And besides, he knew that if he crashed into someone, his car was a lot bigger than theirs, so it would be too bad for them.