Remarkable
Authors: Elizabeth Foley
Dial Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Dial Books for Young Readers
A division of Penguin Young Readers Group • Published by the Penguin Group
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Lizzie K. Foley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Foley, Lizzie K.
Remarkable : a novel / by Lizzie K. Foley. p. cm.
Summary: Ten-year-old Jane Doe, the only student average enough to be excluded from the own of Remarkable’s School for the Remarkably Gifted, is joined at her public school by the trouble-making Grimlet twins, who lead her on a series of adventures involving an out-of-control science fair project, a pirate captain on the run from a mutinous crew, a lonely dentist, and a newly constructed bell tower that endangers Remarkable’s most beloved inhabitant—a skittish lake monster named Lucky.
ISBN: 978-1-101-57533-8
[1. Eccentrics and eccentricities—Fiction. 2. Ability—Fiction. 3. Secrets—Fiction.
4. Pirates—Fiction. 5. Community life—Fiction. 6. Humorous stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.F7316Re 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011021641
Published in the United States by Dial Books for Young Readers,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Designed by Jennifer Kelly
Printed in USA
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
8: Dangerous Deeds and Dastardly Intentions
9: Tea with the Pirate Captain
11: Asta Magnifica’s Day at School
14: A Bit More about the Jelly
16: A Crash and a Splash in the Night
18: More about the Jelly and the Dentist
20: A Disharmony in the Daylight
32: The Story of the Mad Captain
34: The Pirates Versus the Grimlet Twins
H
igh on the top of a majestic mountain, in a spot where every view of the valley below was more breathtaking than the next, was a small town called Remarkable.
The town had not always had this name. It once had been called something rather ordinary, like Hoopersville, or Hill Valley, or some other name that no one could remember anymore. But whenever tourists came to visit, they couldn’t help but notice what a remarkably nice place it was. The air was always fresh and the weather was always pleasant. The parks smelled like newly cut grass, and unlike most local museums, the Museum of Remarkability wasn’t the least bit dusty
or dull. There was a beautiful lake known as Lake Remarkable, and nearby were three elegant glass-domed buildings that housed the world’s largest live butterfly collection. Additionally, Remarkable was home to the world’s two tallest trees, a celebrated science fair, and the best organic jelly that anyone had ever tasted.
As you might expect, the people who lived in Remarkable were pretty splendid, too. They tended to be terribly interesting and even more terribly talented. In fact, they were among the most terribly interesting and talented people in the whole wide world. The tourists felt lucky just to breathe the same sweet air as all of these important individuals, and the important individuals thought the tourists were lucky, too.
Long after the tourists went back to their drab little lives in the drab little places they had come from (and their friends and coworkers had grown sick and tired of hearing about their vacations) they just couldn’t seem to stop talking about how the town they had visited had been remarkable—Remarkable. Eventually, the town was called Remarkable so often that this became its name.
But this is not to say that everything in Remarkable was remarkable. It had a very dull post office, for instance,
and it had a Coffeebucks that sold coffee that was very good, but certainly no better than the coffee served at any other Coffeebucks in any other town. And then there was Jane, who was a very unremarkable girl, ten years old, of medium height, with eyes of no particular color, and hair that was not quite brown enough to be called mousy.
There was no reason that Jane should have been so unremarkable. She was the daughter of astoundingly brilliant parents. Her mother, Angelina Mona Linda Doe, was a famous architect who had designed the many spectacular buildings in Remarkable’s terrifically charming downtown. Her father, Anderson Brigby Bright Doe II, was an award-winning novelist whose thought-provoking books (and striking cleft chin) were discussed in depth at book groups all across the country. When they decided to start a family, everyone in town figured that their children would be geniuses. And everyone would have been right, too, if it were not for Jane.
Jane had an older brother named Anderson Brigby Bright Doe III. He was remarkably good-looking—so handsome, in fact, that people often stopped him in the streets to tell him about it. These comments always made him blush right to the roots of his wonderfully
wavy hair, giving everyone the impression that he was also quite modest—which made him seem even more handsome, since modesty is an attractive quality.
Besides being good-looking, Anderson Brigby Bright Doe III could paint pictures with such precision that they looked just like photographs. His parents were so proud of him that they couldn’t wait to have another child. Two years and two days after Anderson Brigby Bright Doe III was born, Jane entered the world, although hardly anyone noticed.