The Great Pumpkin Smash Read online

  “After I was bumped from the pumpkin-painting contest, Ms. Mitchell asked me to make a special sculpture for the Haunted Woods,” Oliver explained, “something spookier than a grasshopper.”

  Oliver nodded at his tool bag, which was lying under a tree at the edge of the clearing. “I went back to the tent for my pumpkin-carving tools, so I was good to go. After I was finished, I had so much mush I gave it to the Zoo Poo.”

  “And to our Aunt Trudy,” Joe said with a smile. “The birds had a field day!”

  Something Oliver had said jogged Frank’s memory. “When you went back for your tools,” he asked, “how did you get into the tent?”

  “I untied the flap and went inside,” Oliver said.

  “Did you retie the flap on your way out?” asked Frank.

  Oliver thought a minute, then said, “Oops. I think I forgot to. Why do you want to know?”

  “The painted pumpkins in the Boo-seum were smashed,” Frank explained. “The only pumpkins not destroyed were the ones in your sculpture.”

  “Why do you think that is, Oliver?” asked Joe.

  “I don’t think, I know!” Oliver said with a smile. Reaching into his tool bag, he pulled out a can labeled SCAT!

  “Scat?” Joe asked. “What’s that?”

  “It’s an all-natural spray to keep animals away,” said Oliver. “It’s got a lemony smell that most animals don’t like.”

  “Why did you spray an animal repellent on your pumpkin sculpture?” Frank asked.

  Oliver rolled his eyes and said, “Because we’re in a zoo—duh! I didn’t want to take any chances.”

  He put away his can of Scat, then returned to his fans.

  “Oliver left the tent open,” Frank said, “but I’m pretty sure he’s not the pumpkin smasher.”

  “Me too,” said Joe, crossing Oliver’s name off the suspect list. “But now we have no more suspects.”

  Frank glanced over at Oliver’s tool bag and the can of Scat peeking out. “I don’t think the case is over yet, Joe,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Joe asked, pointing to the page. “There’s not one single person left on our suspect list.”

  Frank turned to Joe and smiled. “Who says the pumpkin smasher is a person?”

  THE HARDY BOYS—and

  YOU!

  CAN YOU SOLVE THE MYSTERY of the smashed pumpkins? Grab a piece of paper and write down your answers. Or turn the page to find out the answer to this boo-dunit!

  1. Frank told Joe that maybe the pumpkin smasher was not a person. What do you think he meant by that?

  2. Frank and Joe ruled out Adam Ackerman, Victor the Constrictor, and Oliver Splathall as the pumpkin smashers. Who else at the zoo might have smashed the painted pumpkins?

  3. When working on a case, Frank and Joe come up with the five Ws: who, what, where, when, and why. Some detectives add a sixth word: how. How do you think the pumpkins in the Boo-seum got smashed?

  GOING GRAZE-Y!

  “What do you mean, Frank?” Joe asked. “If it’s not a person, who is it?”

  “Not who—what,” Frank answered. “The only pumpkins left standing were the ones in Oliver’s sculpture.”

  He pointed to Oliver’s tool bag and said, “Oliver sprayed his sculpture with that stuff that keeps animals away!”

  Joe’s eyes popped wide open. “So the painted pumpkins were smashed by animals?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Frank said.

  “But animals don’t run wild at the Bayport Zoo!” said Joe.

  “Right,” Frank agreed. “That’s why we have to go back to the Boo-seum tent to look for more clues.”

  “Sure,” Joe said, looking around. “But how do we get out of the Haunted Woods?”

  “The same way we came in, I guess,” said Frank.

  Joe frowned, remembering the zombie, bats, and monsters. “I was afraid of that,” he groaned. “Come on, let’s go.”

  The brothers followed the scarecrow path out of the Haunted Woods and headed back to the Boo-seum. As they passed the petting zoo, Joe noticed something.

  “The petting zoo is just a few feet away from the tent,” Joe pointed out. “Close enough for the animals to get in there.”

  “But the JZ Squad is always in the petting zoo,” Frank said. “How could the animals make a clean break without them seeing?”

  Clean? Joe smiled as something clicked.

  “The zookeepers washed the animals two times today,” Joe said. “Maybe they were washing off pumpkin mush!”

  “But why didn’t they see the animals leave the petting zoo?” asked Frank. “And how did the animals leave?”

  “Maybe the JZ Squad can tell us!” said Joe.

  They walked over to the petting zoo. The closest zookeeper to the fence was Manuel, brushing fallen leaves from the llama’s coat.

  “Hey, dude,” Joe called.

  Manuel turned toward Joe. “What’s up?”

  “Not much,” Joe said with a shrug. “Just wondering if any of the animals escaped the petting zoo today.”

  “Escaped?” Manuel scoffed. “The JZ Squad has their eyes on these animals at all times. Each one!”

  Manuel lifted his arm to point to the animals. His sleeve moved, uncovering a rubber band on his wrist. It was the snake band the kids got at the Victor the Constrictor Show!

  “Manuel’s got the Victor the Constrictor wristband,” Joe whispered. “That means he was at the show!”

  “The show was at the same time the pumpkins were smashed,” Frank murmured back. “The junior zookeepers said they weren’t going to the show.”

  “What if they did?” Joe hissed. “And left the animals alone?”

  “What are you guys whispering about?” Manuel asked.

  “We were just talking about the Victor the Constrictor Show,” Frank said quickly. “Too bad you guys missed it.”

  “Yeah!” Joe shouted over the fence. “Victor smashed a whole pumpkin between his hands—to slither-eens!”

  Stephanie, who was helping a little kid feed a goat, turned around. “Wrong,” she shouted back at the brothers. “Victor the Constrictor tried to smash the pumpkin, but he couldn’t do it!”

  “How would you know?” Joe asked.

  “Because,” Stephanie said. “We saw it when we were at the—”

  She stopped midsentence to clap her hand over her mouth. Her sleeve slipped up her arm to reveal a rubber snake band!

  “So!” Joe declared. “You guys were at the Victor the Constrictor Show!”

  “How do you know?” asked Stephanie, tugging her sleeve down to cover her band.

  “It’s all in the wrist!” Joe stated. “The proof, I mean.”

  Stephanie moved toward the fence. So did the llama.

  “So what if we were all at the show?” Manuel asked. “What difference does it make?”

  “The painted pumpkins were smashed at the same time as the Victor the Constrictor Show,” Frank explained. “Maybe your animals broke into the Boo-seum tent while you were there.”

  “No way!” Manuel insisted. “Our animals were nowhere near any pumpkins.”

  Suddenly—

  SPLAT! Another llama loogie was fired—landing on Frank’s lab coat!

  “Ugh!” Frank groaned. “Llama spit again!”

  Joe watched the dripping blob and smiled. “More than spit this time, Frank,” he said. “It’s a clue!”

  “What do you mean, a clue?” Frank asked.

  “Notice the pumpkin seeds in the llama’s spit,” said Joe. “I may not be an expert on llamas, but I’d say he was feasting on pumpkins!”

  “No wonder there was hardly any pumpkin mush in the tent,” Frank stated. “The petting zoo animals did more than just smash pumpkins. They ate them.”

  Manuel folded his arms and said, “How do you know we don’t feed our llama pumpkin?”

  “You told us you only feed him those little brown things,” Joe said. “If I were a llama, I’d escape too—for a better meal!”


  The JZ Squad shrugged and shook their heads in defeat. Manuel turned to the brothers and said, “Okay, okay. We did go to see Victor the Constrictor.”

  Stephanie frowned at Manuel and said, “And one of us left the gate unlatched.”

  “It was an accident!” Manuel protested. “I remembered the gate while Victor was trying to squeeze that pumpkin.”

  “As we ran back to the petting zoo, we heard noises in the tent,” explained Stephanie. “We peeked inside and saw our animals going wild!”

  “The miniature horse, the pig, the goat, and the llama,” Manuel sighed. “All stomping, smashing, and eating pumpkin guts and seeds!”

  “We had a hard time getting them all back into the petting zoo,” Stephanie said. “But nobody else saw the animals. Lucky for us, everyone was at the Victor the Constrictor Show.”

  Frank and Joe felt lucky too. They had just gotten a confession from the JZ Squad. They also got their last W. Who . . turned out to be the animals!

  “You are going to tell Director Doug what happened,” Frank told the junior zookeepers. “Right?”

  “No way!” Manuel said, shaking his head. “We’d get kicked off the JZ Squad for leaving the animals alone in the pen.”

  “You have to tell Doug!” Joe insisted. “He said if they don’t find the pumpkin smashers, there’ll be no more Boo at the Zoo.”

  He pointed at the JZ Squad and added, “No more Boo . . because of you!”

  “No more Boo?” Stephanie gasped. “Say it’s not true!”

  “Okay, JZ Squad,” said Manuel. “I just thought of something we have to do.”

  “What?” Stephanie asked.

  Manuel frowned and said, “Fess up!”

  Frank, Joe, and the two junior zookeepers found Director Doug in the Boo-seum, overseeing the pumpkin-mess cleanup. Aunt Trudy was also in the tent, taking a break from feeding the birds to help out.

  Doug, still dressed in his penguin costume, listened to Manuel and Stephanie as they explained everything.

  “So you see, Director Doug,” Manuel said, “we goofed.”

  “I guess so,” Doug agreed, then cracked a small smile. “But as zookeepers, you learned something important.”

  “What?” asked Manuel.

  “Never leave animals unattended,” Director Doug replied. “And never, ever leave the gate open.”

  “Got it,” Manuel sighed.

  “We learned something else, Director Doug,” Stephanie said. “That animals love smashing pumpkins!”

  “Yeah,” said Manuel. “They all looked so happy doing it!”

  “Happy?” Aunt Trudy said. “Well, that’s that then!”

  “What’s what, Aunt Trudy?” Frank asked.

  “That’s how animals can have fun on Halloween,” Aunt Trudy announced excitedly. “With a zoo-wide animal pumpkin smash!”

  Everyone listened as Aunt Trudy described larger animals like elephants, gorillas, and rhinos smashing, ripping apart, and eating pumpkins. The birds, of course, would feast on the seeds!

  “I’ve heard of animal pumpkin smashes at other zoos on Halloween,” said Doug. “I’m sure the animals would love it, but what about the kids?”

  “Are you kidding, Director Doug?” Joe said with a smile. “It’ll be a smash hit!”

  • • •

  “Who, what, where, when, and why,” Joe said, pointing to a page in their clue book. “All five Ws figured out!”

  “With a lot of time left to rock the Boo!” said Frank as they waited to ride the Twisting Tarantula.

  Joe wrote Case Closed at the bottom of the page. He dropped his pencil and the clue book into his pocket as the line began to move.

  “Hey, Frank,” said Joe. “You know what’s even cooler than a Boo at the Zoo?”

  “What?” Frank asked.

  “A clue at the zoo!” Joe replied, smiling at the nearby animal pens and habitats. “And the ones we found—were wild!”

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Franklin W. Dixon is the author of the ever-popular Hardy Boys series of books.

  Santy Gutiérrez resides in the seaside city of La Coruña, Spain. He has won awards such as the Best Spanish Young Editorial Cartoonist and Best Galician Caricaturist, among others.

  Aladdin

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Franklin-W-Dixon

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Santy-Gutiérrez

  DON’T MISS ANY OF THE CASES IN THE HARDY BOYS CLUE BOOK SERIES!

  #1: The Video Game Bandit

  #2: The Missing Playbook

  #3: Water-Ski Wipeout

  #4: Talent Show Tricks

  #5: Scavenger Hunt Heist

  #6: A Skateboard Cat-astrophe

  #7: The Pirate Ghost

  #8: The Time Warp Wonder

  #9: Who Let the Frogs Out?

  Coming Soon

  #11: Bug-Napped

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALADDIN

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  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  First Aladdin paperback edition September 2019

  Text copyright © 2019 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Santy Gutiérrez

  Also available in an Aladdin hardcover edition.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  ALADDIN and related logo are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  THE HARDY BOYS and colophons are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  HARDY BOYS CLUE BOOK and colophons are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Series designed by Karina Granda

  Cover designed by Tiara Iandiorio

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dixon, Franklin W., author. | Gutiérrez, Santy, 1971- illustrator. Title: The great pumpkin smash / by Franklin W. Dixon ; illustrated by Santy Gutierrez.

  Description: First Aladdin hardcover/paperback edition. | New York : Aladdin, 2019. | Series: Hardy boys clue book ; #10 | Summary: Brothers Frank and Joe Hardy investigate strange occurrences during Bayport Zoo’s annual Halloween party, Boo at the Zoo.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018046689 (print) | LCCN 2018051577 (eBook) |

  ISBN 9781534431256 (eBook) | ISBN 9781534431232 (pbk) | ISBN 9781534431249 (hc)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Zoos—Fiction. | Halloween—Fiction. | Brothers—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories. Classification: LCC PZ7.D644 (eBook) | LCC PZ7.D644 Gv 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018046689