The Incredibly Edible Shrinking Freddibles

By Jim Hernan

If you read only one book this year about tainted breakfast cereal and a short-sighted talking frog then make sure it’s The Incredibly Edible Shrinking Freddibles.

This is the quirky debut children’s book from Irish writer Jim Hernan which kicks off with ninety five year-old tycoon Dr. Otto Kogg losing control of his breakfast cereal business to the ambitious but bumbling Ivan M.T. Head. In a botched attempt to improve upon Kogg’s beloved Freddibles cereal, Head alters the recipe and re-launches it as a Head Dietary Product. But things don’t work out quite as planned and soon questions are being asked about New Recipe Freddibles...serious questions about strange side-effects.

Our two wise-cracking heroines Anna and Grace learn that breakfast can indeed be the most important meal of the day. They get shrunk down to speck-size, thrown out into a flowerbed and have to stumble, slide, swim, tunnel, climb and fly their way past everything a garden can throw at them as they try to get back home.

But even if they can, getting home may be only half the battle. If you were so small that nobody could see you, hear you, smell you or find you, how would you get noticed? Discover the answer in Anna and Grace's first amazing adventure The Incredibly Edible Shrinking Freddibles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Hernan
• Release date: Dec 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301007554

Jim Hernan

Jim Hernan lives in Cork, Ireland with his wife, three children and a daft Spaniel.

Book preview

Prologue

Kogg Estate, Beverly Hills, California.

Marla Mendes rode the elevator from the kitchen up to the mansion’s roof garden. From there she could make her way to his study. She always enjoyed bringing him supper up here, especially on these warm summer evenings when she could dawdle awhile in the garden and admire the pink sunset glow bouncing off the Hollywood Hills.

Marla had worked for the old man for the last fifteen years. In that time his routines had become her routines and neither had changed much. His supper was always taken at nine o’clock. His evening phone-call to the kitchen would reveal in which one of the mansion’s two hundred and six rooms he had chosen to dine. Every night the silver tray that Marla carried held a glass of ice-chilled fresh orange juice, a crystal pitcher of milk, a silver spoon on a crisp Egyptian cotton napkin and of course a bowl of his cereal. At the door to the chosen room, she would knock twice and then enter. He was usually seated with his eyes closed but never asleep. Years before, when they were both much younger and she was much more inquisitive, she’d asked him why he chose to have supper sitting all alone in a dark room. He had explained that this was his thinking time when he would put the day’s tasks and distractions behind him so that he could just relax and…think. He was sure that many of his best decisions were made over breakfast, having slept on the previous evening’s thoughts.

Tonight would be no different to the five and a half thousand nights before. Marla placed the tray beside her boss and softly enquired

Is there anything else I can get for you this evening sir ?

No thanks Marla. That’ll do it.

Okay goodnight Dr. Kogg. See you tomorrow.

G’night Marla dear.

Marla left, closing the door softly and went back down to the kitchen to catch the late news and check the California State Lottery results. After she left, Dr.Otto Kogg sat alone in the study, staring at the phone on his desk. On the dark timber panelled walls around him hung framed degrees, diplomas, patents, certificates, citations, awards and poster-sized artwork for cereal box covers. There were photographs too and he featured in most of them. He was smiling alongside movie stars, clinching deals with businessmen, meeting with different Prime Ministers and even eating breakfast with several Presidents, twice at the White House, once here at his place and once at the Kogg Cereal Factory.

The phone rang. Kogg let it ring three times and then hesitantly picked it up. He listened for a minute and then bellowed in a voice much stronger than might be expected after ninety five years spent mostly bellowing,

Ivan I’ll never sell to you and your bunch of screwy sidekicks. You guys spend all of your time trying to make people unhappy with how they look and how they feel, he pounded the desktop. I’ve spent all my life trying to make those same folks feel better about themselves by getting them to start their days with a great breakfast! If you people have your way you’d undo all of that. Darn it you numbskull, I’m ninety five years old and I’ve more money than I could spend if I’d another lifetime to spend it. I’ll never sell this business to you and what’s more my kids all agree with me. We’ll never sell to you. Never I say! He slammed the phone down.

Looking back, ‘agree’ may have been overstating things.

The next day

Head Dietary Products Incorporated

Press Release

Statement from Dr. Ivan M.T.Head, CEO of

Head Dietary Products Inc.

Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen of the press, and all other people who like to eat a decent yet convenient breakfast. I’m very pleased to announce that the ongoing merger discussions between Head Dietary Products Incorporated and the Kogg family have concluded successfully this afternoon with agreement to complete the purchase of The Koggs Cereal and Healthfoods Company by Head Dietary Products and the incorporation of the Koggs range of breakfast products into Head Dietary Products’ Convenience Foods Division. We’re very excited about a new recipe Freddibles cereal which will launch next month. All of us here at Head Dietary Products look forward to working with Otto Kogg and the Kogg family to extend the reach of their beloved range of traditional cereals to new international markets and to the many diverse yet demographically significant cereal consuming domestic population segments where Head Dietary Products already has a darned impressive presence. Good day to you all and continued happy breakfasting !

Chapter 1

When good snacks go bad

It was after midnight. Anna was wide awake under the bedclothes. A thin slice of moon peered out now and then from behind black clouds, casting an eerie grey light into the otherwise pitch dark bedroom. The only sounds in the room were her younger sister Grace’s breathing as she slept in the other bed by the window, and the jingling of the collar-bell worn by Hector their pet hamster as he went for another run in his wheel. Hector’s crate was on the table at the foot of Anna’s bed. Occasionally he would leave the crate during the day and wander off. Nobody knew how he got out or where he went but he always returned at night-time. In the dark, the girls could tell when he was sleeping because he was a snorer, with one long snore always followed by two short ones.

Anna’s hungry tummy rumbled a good deal louder than Hector’s clicking wheel, but suddenly there was another sound in the room. It was faint at first, yet vaguely menacing and it seemed to be moving towards her bed. Anna shivered and listened. There was definitely something there. Was it really moving? A soft creaking of floorboards was joined by a subtle shadowy presence. Anna shuddered and pulled the bed sheet tighter around herself. Then the growing shadow took on the more definite shape of a hand. A sinister grasping hand that was reaching down to pluck at the sheet covering her face. Anna gasped as the bedclothes were