Wonder World

By Phyllis J. Perry

Summer vacation holds little promise for Oliver.

Offered a thirteenth birthday present of joining his grandmother for a vacation in Great Britain, he quickly accepts. With only several children and some unpromising adults, too late he realizes there are few others on the tour with whom he can make friends.

In England, Scotland, and Wales, Oliver finds friends in unpredictable places. He and eighty-year old Mr. Hahn spend time together, and he finds an ally in the Scots bus driver when he seeks to meet a popular British band. He achieves hero status when he fearlessly races after a thief and recovers a purse stolen outside York Cathedral.

By the time the Wonder World tour ends, Oliver has discovered that friends can be young or old and that friendship is forged in the most unexpected ways.

Friendship is a grand adventure...

For 8-16 year-olds

• Language: English
• Publisher: CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
• Release date: Mar 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301699469

Phyllis J. Perry

Phyllis Perry held a number of positions in the Boulder Valley Schools, including teacher, principal and director of talented and gifted education. An award-winning author of more than eighty books, she has published seven books about Colorado, including two about Rocky Mountain National Park. She is a member of the Colorado Authors' League and of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. You can learn more about her and her books by visiting her website at www.phyllisjperry.com

Book preview

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Award-winning author Phyllis J. Perry has published stories, poems, plays and articles in magazines such as Child Life, Hopscotch, Humpty Dumpty, On The Line, The Single Parent and more than 70 books of fiction and non-fiction for both children and adults.

Amongst her recent book publications are:

2001 Animals Under the Ground Franklin Watts/Scholastic

2001 Animals that Hibernate Franklin Watts/Scholastic

2003 Mr. Crumb's Secret Higsmith Press

2003 The Secret of the Silver Key Higsmith Press

2005 A Kid's Look at Colorado Fulcrum Publishing;

2006 The Alien, the Giant and Rocketman Mondo Publishing

2007 Sherlock Hounds: Search & Rescue Dogs Mondo Publishing

2007 Colorado Fun Big Earth Publishing

2008 The Field Guide to Ocean Animals Silver Dolphin

2008, Happened in Rocky Mountain National Park Globe Pequot

2009 The Ghost in the Music Room Innovative Press

2010 Pandas' Earthquake Escape Sylvan Dell

2011 Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Colorado History. Globe Pequot

2012 Bold Women in Colorado History Mountain Press .

2012 Hidden Away Custom Book Publications

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

HIDDEN AWAY

Released in 2012

Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called geocaches or caches, anywhere in the world.

A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date found and signs it with established code name. Plastic storage containers may hold items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value.

Geocaches are currently placed in over two hundred countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica, and the International Space Station.

After more than twelve years of activity, there are more than two million active geocaches published on various online sites. Some estimates suggest there are more than five million geocachers worldwide.

HIDDEN AWAY, a story about geocaching and skateboarding, is intended for all enthusiasts and the young at heart, but particularly those aged 10-14.

The International sign for Geocaching

Copyright © 2013 Phyllis J. Perry

Published by

CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Printed in the United States of America

All the characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons,

living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Award-winning author Phyllis J. Perry, grew up in a small gold mining town in northern California. She attended the University of California and the University of Colorado.

The Author has published more than seventy books of fiction and non-fiction for both children and adults, and written stories, poems, plays and articles for magazines such as Child Life, Hopscotch, Humpty Dumpty, On The Line and The Single Parent.

She lives in Boulder, Colorado and still enjoys the challenge of writing.

WONDER WORLD

by

Phyllis J. Perry

CHAPTER ONE

So this is what I could expect from my summer vacation, I thought, as I stood in a small section of the Denver International Airport scrunched close to my seventy-year-old grandmother. About forty others, burdened with tons of luggage, were huddled together this evening. We circled around a young woman with long brown hair, dressed in a dark blue pants suit. She wore a cheery smile and held up a sign on a short wooden stick that read 'Wonder World Tours.'

I scanned the faces of my fellow travelers, most of them old and wrinkled. Here I was in the midst of balding heads or tightly permed white hair. A small groan escaped, and I wondered once again why in the world I was here.

'Everything all right, Oliver?' my grandmother asked, as she quickly looked towards me.

'Fine,' I lied. I even managed a smile. Actually she looked better than most of our traveling companions. There were not any wrinkles, her short hair was still brown with just a few gray streaks, and on a good day, she had no trouble keeping up with me when we went on weekend hikes near her home in Boulder, Colorado.

It had seemed like a fine idea when Grand, as I always called my grandmother, asked if I might want to accompany her this July on a three-week tour to England, Scotland, and Wales. She said it would be my birthday present. Hey, we get along fine, and it meant I would skip out on all the lawn mowing in the big yard at the new house my folks had bought just last month in Longmont, about twenty miles from Grand's home. Since I had moved, there would not be any friends to come to my birthday party anyway.

Maybe there were kids my age in my new neighborhood, but I sure had not seen them. I do not find it easy to talk to strangers. Dad thought I needed to learn to be more confident. He could walk up to anybody and immediately strike up a conversation. He has that special knack for making friends.

When I complained to Mom about not having anyone to hang out with at our new place, she said I wasn't making an effort, and I lacked people skills, whatever that meant. What exactly did she want me to do? Put a sign in the front yard that read Friends Wanted and stand behind it and smile?

Grand's offer sounded like a good chance to travel and see the world. Maybe I could even make some friends. Right? Wrong. I knew now that this was going to be a miserable trip. Much too late to change my plans, I got a peek at a brochure from Wonder World Tours featuring snapshots of former happy tour groups, standing close together and squinting into the sun. It was proof positive that this company definitely aimed at the over-sixty crowd.

I took another glance around. Correction – way, way over sixty!

I watched four more people join our group.

There was a man and woman – seniors of course, but wouldn't you know, they had two girls with them. One looked my age, about thirteen, and the other was maybe six-years-old. The thirteen-year-old was skinny, as skinny as I was, with light-brown hair. She also wore a lot of makeup, the kind that makes you look like your eyes are sunken somewhere deep in your head. And she had on tons of jewelry, at least half a dozen necklaces and as many bracelets.

The little one looked ordinary enough. She was blond, wore glasses, and had on blue jeans and a pink tee-shirt. She looked awfully serious, and she clutched something green in her arms. I could not make out exactly what it was. Maybe some sort of stuffed animal. Could this quartet have wandered into our Wonder World Tour group by mistake, or was this trip actually going to have not one, but three misfit kids in it?

Our tour guide announced that she was Maggie Hocking and that she would be with us every step of this exciting adventure we were just beginning. 'First, I'm going to count noses.' She started her count, and there was a note of triumph in her voice when she announced, 'Forty-six!' a few moments later. She beamed as if we had already done something wonderful.

'We're all here and almost ready to go. Thank you for remaining patient while I check your name on my list… and give you each some little gifts!' The wattage on her smile went up as she added this last.

When she finally got to Grand and me and checked us off, she handed us our gifts--a clear plastic raincoat folded up into a tiny package that had the Wonder World logo printed on it, and a red luggage strap with Wonder World printed in white script all around it. Yippee. Grand proceeded to put the strap around her suitcase and gave me a look that clearly said I was expected to do the same. So I did.

Our suitcases already stood out. Grand had said that these days everyone traveled with a black suitcase, and for easy identification, all travelers tied a red ribbon to it. When you tried to pick out your suitcase from the others, it was sort of like playing a 'Where in the World of Waldo is my suitcase' game. So she had made bright blue and white yarn pom-poms to tie on our suitcase handles.

'Different!' she said. 'These will be easy to spot!' And she was right. With the added new red and white luggage straps, our cases looked downright patriotic.

Next our group was joined by an airline employee who made a quick examination of our passports. Unfortunately, he had no trouble at all identifying me from my passport picture--dark brown hair, chipped front tooth from my skateboard wipe-out last month, and a scowl. The chipped tooth had been fixed, but nothing else had changed. That was me all right. He checked our tickets, asked Grand a couple of routine questions, and the luggage was finally whisked away.

We picked up our carry-on bags and were near the front of the line, slowly moving forward toward an escalator when the elderly man standing right in front of Grand and me, and wearing a tweed sweater and a snappy-looking blue beret, suddenly stopped in his tracks. I almost bumped into him.

He gave a gasp, turned around partway with a surprised look on his face, clutched at his chest, and fell to the floor. He lay there staring up and breathing heavily. His companion gave a scream. I froze and stared. The neat line of travelers disintegrated into a chaotic mess. Maggie Hocking came rushing back. Her bright smile had vanished.

'Would everyone please move back?' Maggie asked.

Grand and I stepped aside. We watched as Maggie whipped out her cell phone, and in less than a minute, people were everywhere--uniformed soldiers, police, airport employees, and shortly thereafter, paramedics. There could not have been much more activity even if someone had shouted, 'Terrorist Bomb Attack!'

As we stood there waiting, and trying to keep out of the way, the man, woman, and two girls that I had spied earlier walked up and joined us.

'Heart attack, do you think?' the woman said to Grand in hushed tones.

'Could be,' Grand said. 'The poor, poor man. His wife is beside herself.'

That was an understatement. She was on her knees beside her husband sobbing hysterically. People in our tour group continued to stand quietly or whisper, alternately staring and looking away.

The paramedics worked fast. They hooked an oxygen mask over the man's face and carefully lifted him onto a stretcher. Maggie exchanged a few hurried words with the man's wife, and then the couple were rushed off.

Maggie continued to stand there, speed-dialing one number after another, talking nonstop on her cell phone.

'Oh, by the way,' the man who had just stepped up to us said, still speaking in a hushed voice. 'In all the confusion I didn't even introduce us. I'm Bernard Jennings. This is my wife, Tess, and our granddaughters, Blake and Auden.'

'Pleased to meet you,' Grand whispered back. 'I'm Annie Cunningham, and this is my grandson, Oliver.'

Normally I'm a little embarrassed when I'm introduced. Not many people these days are called Oliver. It's a name that sort of stands out, like the pom-poms on our suitcases. Definitely different. But compared with girls' names like Blake and Auden, I thought Oliver sounded pretty ordinary.

'I'm glad someone else is traveling with a grandchild,' Mrs. Jennings said, and she beamed at me. 'Maybe they'll all become great friends.'

I doubt it, I thought, as I watched Auden roll her eyes.

Finished with her calls at last, Maggie gathered us close to her. 'As you saw, poor Mr. Bennett was suddenly stricken ill. A terrible thing of course.