The Gulliver Giant Read online

  Table of Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  MIDNIGHT LIBRARY

  CHAPTER ONE: WIPED OUT

  CHAPTER TWO: RUDE AWAKENING

  CHAPTER THREE: NO EGG-SCUSE

  CHAPTER FOUR: WHY SO GLUM?

  CHAPTER FIVE: SILVER ORACLE

  CHAPTER SIX: OH, RATS

  CHAPTER SEVEN: GETTING SLEEPY

  CHAPTER EIGHT: MEET IN THE MIDDLE

  EPILOGUE

  INSIDE THE MIDNIGHT MIND OF . . .

  GLOSSARY

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  WRITING PROMPTS

  MICHEAL DAHL

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  COPYRIGHT

  BACK COVER

  Midnight Library

  The MIDNIGHT LIBRARY was named after T. Middleton Nightingale, or “Mid Night.” More than 100 years ago, Nightingale built the library but then vanished. The giant clock in the library went silent. Its hands froze at twelve. Since that day, no one has heard the clock chime again. Except for the librarian Javier and his team of young Pages. Whenever they hear it strike twelve, the library transforms. The world inside a book becomes real—along with its dangers. Whether it’s mysteries to be solved or threats to be defeated, it’s up to the librarian and his Pages to return the Midnight Library to normal.

  THE LIBRARIAN

  JAVIER O’LEARY

  – Javier is supervisor of the library’s Page program.

  THE PAGES

  BARU REDDY

  – He reads a lot of horror

  books. And his memory is awesome.

  JORDAN YOUNG

  – Her parents have banned video games for the summer. She hopes working at the library might get her access to gaming on the library computers.

  KELLY GENDELMAN

  – She figures helping at the library will be fun. Maybe the other Pages will appreciate her love of bad puns

  CAL PETERSON

  – His parents think the library is a good place to expose him to more books. They never expected him to go inside a book!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wiped Out

  Just before 11 a.m. on Saturday, Jordan Young pulled open the heavy doors to the enormous T. Middleton Nightingale City Library and headed inside. She waved quickly at Rolene, the librarian working at the information desk, and headed to the common area. Jordan found the other volunteer Pages seated around their usual table and plopped into a chair.

  “Nice to see you too, Jordan,” Kelly said.

  “What? Oh, hi,” Jordan mumbled and forced her eyes open. “I’m sorry. I was up too late last night.”

  “Playing video games?” Cal asked. “Didn’t your dad ban them for the summer?”

  Jordan shrugged. “He can’t ban them when I’m sleeping over at my friend Missy’s house.”

  A moment later their mentor, Javier McLeary, arrived and set his clipboard down on the table.

  “Happy Saturday, Pages,” the community outreach librarian said, smiling wide. “Gladyou decided to come back, despite what the library has thrown at us the last few weeks.”

  All five of them stared at the enormous old clock set in the middle of the library. The clock was not working. Both hands were stuck at twelve, but no one was ever sure if that meant noon or midnight.

  The T. Middleton Nightingale Library had a strange secret. Every Saturday at 12:00 p.m., it went through a change. Somehow the library shifted into a world resembling a place from one of the hundreds of thousands of books on the massive library’s shelves. Javier said it was like being “inside the mind of an author.” The five of them, however, were the only ones who experienced the change.

  “We weren’t going to let you straighten this place out on your own,” Jordan said and immediately yawned.

  “Sounds like someone could use a siesta!” Javier said.

  A siesta? Wasn’t that a big party? Jordan thought. She felt her eyes slide closed. No, that was a fiesta. Voices became murmurs around her.

  “OK,” Javier said. “Let’s get started.” He smacked his clipboard against the table.

  The noise startled Jordan awake, nearly knocking her out of her chair. “What happened?” Jordan cried.

  “You fell asleep,” Kelly said. “And since you did, you ended up with the kids’ section.”

  Jordan groaned. The kids’ section of the library was always trashed. Trying to organize all the shelves would take the entire afternoon, only for it to get messed up the next day.

  Jordan lasted about thirty minutes in the kids’ section. She spent most of her time near the tables set up for the little readers picking up scattered books on the floor. She sat on the carpet to alphabetize the books, and soon she was asleep.

  She never heard the mysterious bell toll twelve times. She didn’t see the entire library go through another one of its odd transformations.

  She never saw the men approach with ropes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rude Awakening

  When Jordan opened her eyes, she was staring up at a blue sky. She felt something tight pressing against her arms, shoulders, legs, and ankles. She tried to sit up but couldn’t. “OK,” she muttered. “Let’s try that again.”

  Jordan took a deep breath and tried to sit up again. No luck.

  She glanced to her left and right and saw strange-looking, tiny cottages all around a green landscape. Even the trees around the houses looked small, almost like the fake ones made for dollhouses.

  It was difficult for Jordan to see where she was, exactly. She tilted her head and looked along the right side of her body. Small ropes staked into the grass tethered her to the ground.

  “Hey!” Jordan shouted. “Somebody? Anybody?”

  “The giant,” a small voice to her left squeaked. “It’s awake!”

  There was a murmur of small voices on either side of her.

  “Could you untie me?” Jordan asked. “I must’ve fallen asleep.”

  Jordan turned and saw a handful of people—no bigger than six inches tall—staring at her.

  One of them was a brawny, bearded guy with his arms crossed. He held a tiny mallet in one hand. “We’re not letting you go, giant,” he declared. “You’re a prisoner of the proud people of Lilliput!”

  Glancing at the stakes in the ground and the man’s hammer, Jordan realized something.

  They did this to me!

  “Did you capture my friends too?” Jordan asked.

  The man turned to the others. A woman in a dark blue dress shook her head, her eyebrows arched with worry. Another man, dressed like a farmer, lifted his straw hat and scratched his red hair.

  “We haven’t seen any more of your kind,” the farmer said.

  “Not since the Man-Mountain,” the woman added.

  Huh? Jordan thought. What did the library change into this time?

  Jordan felt a tiny pinprick in the back of her neck, then another pain in her right hand. When she glanced to her right side, she could see a tiny arrow sticking out from her skin. She’d been shot!

  She heard a commotion in the distance and saw a small army running through the village. Many of the warriors were armed with bows and arrows. They looked angrier than the three people who had talked to her. All of them had arrows at the ready.

  “Knock it off!” cried Jordan.

  Her shout made the tiny cottages rumble. The warriors held their hands to their ears. One of them fell on his rear end, but quickly picked himself back up.

  “The Blefescu Army!” the bearded guy with the mallet shouted. “Call in our soldiers!”

  Jordan saw the people of Lilliput pour out of their homes—men, women, and children. Some of them had pitchforks. Others carried sticks and small
swords. They looked angry and ready for battle.

  As the small armies gathered around her, Jordan wiggled her fingers. Her thumb brushed against a small wooden spike in the ground. With a quick flick, she knocked it loose. As she did, one of the ropes around her waist loosened.

  With a twist of her waist, Jordan popped two more stakes free. Her arms were loose. She grabbed the ropes across her shoulders and ripped them off.

  “The monster is loose!” an archer from Blefescu shouted.

  Monster? Jordan thought. That’s a new one!

  The little people retreated as Jordan tossed the bindings aside. Another arrow flew through the air and poked her in the forehead.

  “Seriously,” Jordan said, swatting it away like a pesky mosquito. “Stop it.”

  She sat up and looked at the two armies of tiny people on either side of her. They looked frightened of her, but also ready to do battle.

  Jordan thought, I’m in the middle of a war.

  CHAPTER THREE

  No Egg-scuse

  “Listen to me,” Jordan said, trying to sound as powerful as possible. “You need to stop fighting. Right now!”

  The little armies, which stood on either side of her, shouted in disagreement. One of the Blefescu archers fired another arrow, which gave her a little pinprick in her ankle.

  Jordan stood up. “I’m going to eat the next one of you who fires an arrow. Got it?”

  Looks of horror crossed their faces. A few of the Blefescu soldiers ran off into the woods, never looking back. Two or three fainted.

  “Will you really eat us, giant?” the guy with the beard asked. “Maybe eat a Blefescu first since they cannot crack eggs correctly.”

  “Nonsense!” a fierce-looking female archer from Blefescu cried. “You speak the words of a wrong-way-to-crack-an-egg fool!”

  The shouting continued as Jordan grew more and more confused.

  “I’m not going to eat anyone,” Jordan said, trying to defuse the situation. “Just stop with the arrows, OK? It’s annoying.”

  Satisfied that Giant Jordan wasn’t going to gobble them up, the two sides continued arguing about eggs.

  “Are you really fighting about . . . breakfast?” asked Jordan.

  Just then, thunder rumbled the land. It felt as if the world were splitting in two. The tremor knocked dozens of little people off their feet.

  “What is going on?” Jordan shouted.

  She looked down and saw many people running into their shelters. Others didn’t seem to know where to go and ran around aimlessly.

  The ground rumbled again, and a loud screech tore across the sky.

  Something was coming!

  Jordan turned to see an enormous monkey approaching from behind one of the rolling hills. From where Jordan stood, the creature looked as tall as a building. Suddenly she felt as tiny as the people scrambling around her feet.

  If it were the right size, Jordan would’ve thought the monkey was kind of cute. But blown up to one-hundred times its normal size, the creature was terrifying.

  And it was headed their way.

  “Hide!” Jordan cried.

  Little people, friends and enemies, ran together to find shelter. Jordan, however, didn’t have anywhere to hide. She felt completely exposed as the monkey grew closer and closer.

  Suddenly, the monkey screeched and leapt into the air.

  Below Jordan, the man with the beard and the archer from Blefescu ran around in a panic.

  That monkey is going to land on all three of us, Jordan realized.

  Without knowing what else to do, she scooped up the two little people and did a quick roll through the center of the Lilliputian town. A split-second later, the giant monkey landed heavily in the space where they’d just stood.

  It screeched again and pounded its fists against the ground. The tiny cottages shook under the sheer force.

  “Unhand us, giant!” the bearded guy shouted at Jordan in his squeaky voice.

  “My emperor will hear of this!” the archer cried.

  “I just saved the three of us from being squashed,” Jordan said. “If you want, I can hand you two over to Banana Breath over there.”

  The tiny man and the tiny woman looked at each other.

  “That’s OK,” the woman said. “We’re good.”

  “Carry on, giant,” Beardy replied.

  Realizing there was no way to fight a monkey the size of a building, Jordan ran into the woods, which only came up to her knees. She headed toward a mountain she spotted on the far end of the island. It was the only thing big enough that she could hide behind.

  “Your treacherous Lilliputian ways have unleashed that beast,” the archer cried. She pointed at the monkey, who seemed to have lost interest in the three of them.

  “That giant rampages because of your mistreatment of the egg!” Beardy cried in return.

  “Hey, hey!” Jordan shouted, loud enough to startle the two bickering enemies in her left hand. “Do I have to separate you two?”

  Beardy crossed his arms in frustration, still holding his mallet.

  “I wish you would,” he growled. “Her foolishness burns my nostrils.”

  Archer nocked an arrow into her bow. “Then let me fix that for you.”

  “Enough,” Jordan said, stopping in her tracks. “I’ve heard just about enough of—”

  From out of nowhere, two enormous fingers grabbed Jordan by the back of her shirt, lifting her off the ground and into the sky.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Why So Glum?

  Jordan wasn’t a big fan of heights, so as she rose higher and higher into the sky, she clenched her eyes closed. Realizing she still had a couple of little people in her fist, she opened her eyes for a second to make sure they were OK.

  Beardy and Archer clung to her thumb and pointer finger, their eyes wild with fear.

  “Is this her?” a booming voice asked.

  When Jordan looked up, she saw a giant-sized girl looking down on her. Standing on the giant’s shoulders were four people with familiar faces.

  “You got her!” Cal shouted. “That’s Jordan!”

  Jordan could hardly believe it. The other Nightingale Library Pages and Javier were waving at her.

  “Nice work, Glum!” Kelly shouted. “Thanks for finding her!”

  Jordan had a whole bunch of questions, but waited until she was set on the giant’s shoulder too. They all ran over to her and hugged her as if they hadn’t seen her in years. Once the reunion was over, Jordan looked down from the giant’s shoulder. Glum was standing in the sea, just off the shore of the island. It reminded Jordan of when she stood in her little brother’s kiddie pool back home.

  “I thought I was here all by myself,” Jordan said.

  “We didn’t see you when the clock chimed,” Javier said. “What happened to you?”

  Jordan took a deep breath. Time to tell the truth, she realized.

  “I fell asleep in the children’s section,” Jordan said. “When I woke up, I was tied down in a village of tiny people.”

  “We’re not tiny!” Beardy said. “You’re just big.”

  “Huge,” Archer added.

  “It is just as we suspected,” Baru said. “The library has been changed to the world of Gulliver’s Travels. We met Glumbdalclitch here and—”

  “Glum for short,” the giant girl said, smiling. “My name is kind of a mouthful.”

  I just hope this giant stays friendly, or she might have a mouthful of us! Jordan thought. Suddenly she realized how the little people must’ve felt when she threatened to eat them too.

  “Why did you pick those guys up?” Cal asked, pointing at the little people. “I’d be afraid I’d drop them.”

  “I didn’t have much choice. After I freed myself, there were a bunch of them fighting,” Jordan explained. “But, before I could do anything, a giant monkey showed up—”

  “A giant monkey?” Glum asked. Her shoulders shifted in excitement and all of them had to clutch the fabric o
f her shirt to keep from falling off.

  Jordan nodded. “It almost landed on the three of us. I grabbed these two and got out of the way.”

  “Where is it?” Glum asked excitedly.

  Jordan looked out toward the island. She couldn’t see the monkey anymore and wondered if it was hiding behind the mountain.

  “I don’t know,” Jordan admitted. “Maybe it’s gone.”

  “I hope not,” Kelly said. “Glum is looking for him. He’s her pet.”

  “I never should have let him into the kitchen,” Glum said. “He got into the cookies and when he does, he gets into too much mischief.”

  “Happened to my little brother growing up,” Javier said. “Too much sugar and he would bounce off the walls.”

  The group stood quietly for a while, staring at the island as if expecting the monkey to appear again at any moment. No one seemed to know what to do or say. Jordan was surprised to see that even Beardy and Archer were quiet, seemingly too worn out to argue anymore.

  “I should probably get these two back to where they belong,” Jordan said.

  “Please, please find my monkey,” Glum begged. “I’m afraid he’s going to get lost.”

  “Or destroy the town of Lilliput,” Jordan added.

  “Couldn’t you just grab the monkey on your own?” Cal asked. “I mean, if it’s a giant, we’re probably too little to pick it up.”

  “I’m afraid to walk on the island,” Glum said. “My footsteps could level their towns.”

  “Or crush our horses!” Beardy shouted.

  “I’ve remained out here in the ocean until I can grab the little rascal,” Glum explained. “But every time I get close, he dashes away.”

  Catch a giant monkey, Jordan thought. Is that what we’ve got to do to get the library to turn back to normal? But how are we supposed to do it?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Silver Oracle

  A small voice sounded from Jordan’s hand. “Perhaps we should consult the silver oracle,” Beardy said. “It might have some wisdom to impart.”