Amy's Who's Who BookAt first Jimmy McGee didn't know he was a hero. He never even thought what he was. Just a busy fellow, a plumber, mainly. Banging on pipes, waking people up, fixing things, making faucets stop dripping, going here, going there . . . zoomie-zoomie. That was his business.But one day he found himself on a page in a book. The name of this book was the Who's Who Book by Amy. It was a little brown-red notebook that happened to open, as if by magic, to the M page. He read this:McGee, Jimmy: a little fellow, a plumber, a banger on pipes, a HERO.That's what astonished him . . . HERO! Why hero? The rest of what the book said about him was correct. But why, why hero? He had to try to find an answer to this startling question.It was an evening during the summer, and the place was a little cottage in Truro on Cape Cod. The cottage, named The Bizzy Bee, was high up on a dune at the beach. The little girl Amy, who wrote that book, her mother, her father, who was a teacher and had all summer for a vacation, and their great dog, a dark brown-and-white springer spaniel named Wags, were the people who called this cottage their summer headquarters. Spending the summer with Amy was her best friend, Clarissa. Both Amy and Clarissa had long blond hair and blue eyes; both were seven, going on eight, and in the same class in school.Amy didn't know where Jimmy McGee's summer headquarters were. Nobody knew. Most people didn't even know about Jimmy McGee at all. But Amy did. Otherwise she would not have put him in her Who's Who Book in the M's.The family had only just arrived in the old gray Dodge and were bringing in their luggage and cartons, putting them in the right rooms of The Bizzy Bee. While the big people were unloading, Amy and Clarissa raced around the cottage. At the front, which faced the sea, they stood, silent, at the top of the dune and looked out at the wide, wide ocean. They flung back their arms, took in deep breaths of the pure ocean air, and watched the waves come rolling in and break on the sunny, sandy beach way down below.Amy said, "Clarissa. It's a rule that we cannot roll down, down the dune to the sandy beach. You'd like to, I know. So would I. But it's a rule my mama and papa made, and they don't make many. When they do, they always have a good reason. Here, Clarissa, you know the sand of the dune might collapse and come pouring down on you and smother you to smithereens.""O-o-oh!" Clarissa gasped. She drew back from the wispy weeds at the top of the edge of the dune.Amy laughed. "Well," she said. "Now, we'll go over there. There are steps there. Twenty-six in all. Just like the alphabet."These steps led down to the beach and were only about fifteen feet from the front of The Bizzy Bee.At the top of the gray weather-beaten wooden stairs there was a little platform with a bench to sit on. There Amy and Clarissa and Amy's mother and father and their friends could sit and shake the sand off their wet towel Excerpted from The Curious Adventures of Jimmy Mcgee by Eleanor Estes All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
