First published in the USA in 2018 by Simon & Schuster BFYR, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
First published in Great Britain in 2019
by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited
The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN
Text copyright © 2018 Andrew Smith
Jacket illustration copyright © 2018 Mike Perry
The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted
First e-book edition 2019
ISBN 978 1 4052 9398 3
Ebook ISBN 978 1 4052 9399 0
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.
For Amy Sarig King
I’ve been wading through all this unbelievable junk and wondering if I should have given the world to the monkeys.
—ELVIS COSTELLO
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
—WALLACE STEVENS
Education makes machines which act like men
and produces men who act like machines.
—ERICH FROMM
CONTENTS
Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright ♦ Cheese Ball! ♦ I Am the Worm ♦ Cager Messer’s List of Things He’s Never Done ♦ Hocus Pocus, and Kansas Is Full of Shit ♦ A Visit to the Hotel Kenmore ♦ Getting On Board ♦ Mojave Field ♦ Rabbit & Robot ♦ In with the Cogs ♦ Are We There Yet? ♦ Printer Ketchup ♦ Like Nothing Else in Tennessee ♦ Parker, My Valet ♦ The Longest Elevator Ride of My Life ♦ Dr. Geneva, and What Space Does to Teenage Boys ♦ Of Clocks, Cogs, and the Sense of Smell ♦ Captains Outrageous ♦ Canard à l’Orange ♦ Good King Wenceslas, and a Serious Obelisk of Friendship ♦ Deck 21 ♦ I Am the Worm ♦ Never Send a Human to Do a Cog’s Job ♦ It Really Is Christmas ♦ The Proper Way to Prepare a Curry ♦ I’m Pretty Sure We’re Upside Down Now ♦ It Happens Here, I Guess ♦ A Pedestrian Assessment of Alsatian History ♦ A Cruise-Directing Phoenix from the Ashes ♦ Stopped at the Wicket ♦ The Boy from First Class, and a Fire in the Bank ♦ An Infinity of Nevers, and a Mission to Find a Can Opener ♦ Captains Get to Do Whatever They Want to Do ♦ Right Side Up, Upside Down ♦ There’s a Bright Side to Just About Everything ♦ Unless You Happen to Be Dying to Die ♦ We Raise Our Hands ♦ A Most Unfortunate Dane ♦ Billy Hinman Goes to Church ♦ Getting Out of the Memphis Hotel ♦ Thanks for Not Killing Me ♦ Out of Bed and Into the Tennessee ♦ The Lost Girls, and the Boy in the Bucket ♦ Duncan’s Horses ♦