Flip and Pate's Magical Potion Adventure

By Lori Rousche

Flip and Pate's Magical Potion Adventure is a 95 page fiction chapter book written for children 7-10 years old. The story is a hilarious romp involving magical elixirs that cause an uproar at the Brookdale Elementary School. The story has a very lively and clever female protagonist. Sophia MacAllister Phlippet, "Flip" to her friends and family, is a fifth-grade witch who is tired of getting picked on by her nemesis, Justin Johnston.
Her grandmother gifts her The Potion Bible which is full of magic potion recipes such as 'Belch in a Bottle' and 'Wonderful Woof Water'. The unusual effects from the elixirs last approximately four hours.
With help from her best friend, Pate, Flip intends to put Justin in his place with a magic potion that will cause him embarrassment. Justdumb, as she refers to him, also has the unusual gift of dabbling—or making magic elixirs—unbeknownst to Flip. Both come up with tricky ways to get the other to drink the mixtures. Flip causes Justin to belch nonstop during Mr Yang's social studies class and then attract hundreds of dogs to the school. Justin causes Flip to speak only by screaming and then to grow thick werewolf hair on her neck and ankles. The Brookdale Elementary School becomes a crazy battleground of potion wars and the kids each end up in detention. Flip has to miss Pate's championship football game because of a hairy neck.
Pate tries to make peace between Flip and Justin and gets caught in the skirmish. Flip never thought she would have to choose between winning the potion war and keeping her best friend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733662314

Book preview

Chapter One

I got into a heap of trouble last spring. And I mean BIG trouble. The kind of trouble that makes your parents use your whole name. For me, that’s Sophia MacAllister Phlippet, which is quite a mouthful for anyone. That’s why my friends call me Flip.

My terrible woes of the spring of my fifth-grade year all started because I like to dabble, and by that, I mean, experiment with magic. It’s something my grandmother taught me. I’m actually part witch. Not an old-time witch with a big nose with a wart growing out of it and a pointy chin, but a modern-day one who wears shirts with monkeys on them, pulls her ponytail through a baseball cap, and dabbles in potions.

I didn’t know I was a little different from the other kids at school until the second grade. Gran explained it all one night while she was babysitting me. She’s from the old country, which in her case means someplace across the Atlantic Ocean, and she was born with the power to dabble. She can mix up interesting elixirs or potions that cause people to do unusual things. She had an ancient book that held the spells, and she created a few doozies! Never when my mother was home, though. As far as I know, Mom has the gift but doesn’t like to talk about it. It’s out of her comfort zone. Gran says Mom never enjoyed dabbling in magic for some reason.

So anyway, by the end of the school year, not only did I get detention but my best friend, Nicholas Peyton, almost dumped me because of the trouble I caused! It partially involved football, of course, because Pate, as everyone calls him, loves everything to do with that sport. And our—my—dabbling caused me to miss the biggest football game of the year. Pate even scored a touchdown for me! And I missed it. He wasn’t very happy with me at all. I explained to him that he would play for our Brookdale Middle School team during the following fall and that there would be other games I would attend. This, along with a humongous apology and a promise not to cook any more potions, seemed to make him feel better.

Pate is much smarter than he acts. Some people think he’s just a not-so-intelligent athlete. According to my mom, he’s not the brightest boy she’s ever met, but according to me, he sure is fun.

The Peytons have lived next door to me since I was a baby, when my family moved to Brookdale. Pate and I grew up together and spent enough time with each other that we could’ve been siblings. We attended the same Gymboree classes, the same preschool, the same kindergarten, and now the same elementary school. We’ve carpooled together for over nine years! That’s a lot of backseat fun. He can be as silly as I can and is almost always up for any crazy plan I mention, which is a great trait for a best buddy to have.

Pate and I were happy and doing well in the fifth grade last spring when I thought up the bright idea that led to our terrible trouble. We had Mrs. Nightshade for our fifth-grade teacher, but we called her Mrs. Nightmare because she sort of was. She could be really strict for a young teacher and didn’t let us get too carried away. We switched out of her room for two of our classes—social studies and language arts (which is a fancy way of saying English class)—but spent the rest of the day with her.

Not only were we stuck with her for the whole year, but we also had Justin Johnston (not so fondly known as Justdumb) in our class. He picked on Pate and me a lot. Actually, he picked on me a lot, but since Pate and I were together most of the time, it seemed like he gave Pate a hard time too. He always harassed me whenever he had a chance. Too bad he was so handsome—blond hair that hung over baby-blue eyes, the tallest boy in our class, built like an athlete…but with the personality of an onion. We were on a peewee soccer team together when we were only five years old. I accidentally tripped him as he was headed into the goal to score, and I don’t think he ever forgave me. Almost every day at school was another opportunity for him to hassle me.

One blistery cold morning in March, I arrived