The Mystery of the Carnival Prize

Table of Contents

 

Cam and Eric watched the children throw their dimes onto the cardboard. Not one even came close to winning. Then a girl wearing a red baseball cap gently tossed a coin onto the cardboard. It slid and then stopped inside the circle in the center of the cardboard.

“I win,” the girl said, and she smiled. She had braces on her teeth. There were only two prizes left. “I’ll take that one,” the girl said. She pointed to a little toy monkey.

Freddy gave the stuffed animal to the girl. She walked off with it. Then Freddy picked up the metal pot. He reached into his pocket and took out the wooden spoon.

“Don’t bang on the pot,” Cam said.

“But why not? I have a winner,” Freddy said.

“There’s something odd about the middle circle. Both times I was here, a dime suddenly stopped inside it.”

 

PUFFIN BOOKS

Published by Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group,
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, Inc., 1984
Published by Puffin Books, 1992
Reissued 1999

This edition published by Puffin Books,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2004

Text copyright © David A. Adler, 1984

Illustrations copyright © Susanna Natti, 1984
All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE 1992 PUFFIN BOOKS EDITION
UNDER CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 91-67506

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-07597-5

 

 

RL: 2.6

The street was being repaired. Cars were lined up in both directions waiting to pass.

Cam Jansen squeezed the handbrakes of her bicycle. The bike stopped, and Cam got off. She waited for her friend Eric Shelton and Eric’s twin sisters, Donna and Diane.

“Why are people honking?” Eric asked as he got off his bicycle. “They know they have to wait.”

Cam, Eric, Donna, and Diane walked with their bicycles past mounds of dirt and rocks and a large truck mixing cement. They walked past the long line of waiting cars.

“Hey,” a woman called from her car. “Does one of you children want to trade your bicycle for my car?”

“I’m sorry,” Cam answered. “But we’re too young to drive.”

As the children continued to walk, Diane asked Eric, “Does she really want to trade? We could give the car to Mom.”

“She was just joking. If she was riding a bicycle like we are, she wouldn’t be stuck in this traffic jam.”

Cam and Eric were going to school to help with the fifth-grade carnival. It was spring vacation, and their grade was raising money to buy books for the school library. Donna and Diane were going to play the carnival games.

Cam, Eric, and the twins waited at the corner for the traffic light to turn green.

“I want to play the Ring Toss,” Diane said.

“Well, I’m only playing games that have big furry stuffed animals as prizes,” Donna said. “I plan to win one.”

Cam said,
“Click,”
and closed her eyes. Cam always says “Click” when she wants to remember something. “It’s the sound a camera makes,” Cam often explains. “And my mind is a mental camera.”

Cam has what adults call a “photographic memory.” They mean that Cam can remember every detail in an entire scene. It’s as if she had a photograph of everything she has seen stored in her brain.

“There are fourteen games at the carnival,” Cam said with her eyes still closed. “The only ones with stuffed animals as prizes are the Button Jar Guess, the Dime Toss, and the Baseball Throw.”

Cam’s real name is Jennifer. When she was a baby, people called her “Red” because she has red hair. But when they found out about her amazing memory and heard her say “Click,” they began calling her “The Camera.” Soon “The Camera” was shortened to “Cam.”

Eric pulled on Cam’s sleeve and said, “Let’s go. The light has changed.”

Cam opened her eyes. She walked with her bicycle across the street. Then the four children got on their bicycles and rode to school. They were stopped at the gate.

“You can’t go in yet,” the teacher standing by the gate told Cam. “The carnival hasn’t opened yet.”

“We’re working in the carnival,” Cam told the teacher. “My name is Jennifer Jansen. This is Eric Shelton, and these are Eric’s sisters, Donna and Diane.”

The teacher was about to check his list when he saw a tall boy with curly blond hair at the gate.

“Stop,” the teacher told the boy. “You can’t go in yet.”

“I’m not going in. I’m leaving,” the boy said as he walked past.

“Oh,” the teacher said. Then he looked at his list and told Cam, Eric, and the twins that they could go in.

“That boy was probably helping,” Eric said as they walked through the gate. “He was carrying a large roll of tape.”

Cam, Eric, and the twins locked their bicycles in the rack near the schoolyard gate. Then Cam and Eric looked for their teacher, Ms. Benson.

“There she is,” Cam said. “The rest of the class is already there. The meeting has already started.”

“Remember, the children are coming here to have a good time,” Ms. Benson said as Cam and Eric sat on the ground. “Now, those of you with booths, go and check that everything is in order.”