Invisible Inkling: The Whoopie Pie War
Harper/Balzer + Bray, 2013. Illustrated by Harry Bliss
The adventures of Brooklyn kid Hank Wolowitz and his invisible bandapat friend continue with The Whoopie Pie War, the third book in the Invisible Inkling series. A truck selling ice-cream whoopie pies sets up right in front of the ice-cream shop belonging to Hank's family, and it's taking away all the shop’s business.
Hank's dad is going crazy. His mom is furious. But Hank and Inkling, his invisible bandapat, aren’t going to take it. The Whoopie Pie War is on!
They’ll do whatever it takes to beat the whoopie pie truck—unicorn costumes, extreme kindness, even an army of supervillains.
(Look! Here's the first book, Invisible Inkling. And the second, Dangerous Pumpkins.)
Click here for a Whoopie Pie War printable classroom activity.
Read a bit of Invisible Inkling: The Whoopie-Pie War:
Hey there.
By now, you know all about Inkling. You know he's an invisible bandapat. You know he speaks English, Yiddish and Mandarin. You know he sleeps in my laundry basket. You know he came to live with me in September of fourth grade when I rescued him from Rootbeer, the hungry French bulldog who lives across the hall.
You know that bandapats are an endangered species from the Peruvian Woods of Mystery. Or possibly the Redwoods of Cameroon. Or the Canadian underbrushlands.
Inkling never gets his stories straight. In fact, he's a liar. He lies so often, I sometimes suspect he's a secret agent. Who else would have that much to hide?
Nobody I can think of.
Though a secret agent would probably lie better than Inkling does.
Hopefully you also remember that we've got to keep hush-hush about Inkling living with me. I can't tell my parents, my sister Nadia, or my friend Chin from downstairs. Scientists are looking for the last of the bandapats. They want to trap them and take them to top-secret labs. They want to know what makes the bandapats invisible. They wonder why the bandapats can only be seen in mirrors and whether eating so much squash has anything to do with it.
The other reason Inkling has to stay hush-hush is that Mom won't let me have a pet. She says Dad, Nadia, me and 700 books -- that's already more than she can handle in a small apartment.
She's really serious about the no-pet thing. Last year before Inkling came, I asked if I could get a black mamba. Sure, they're lethal, but people keep poisonous snakes as pets all the time. Black mambas grow fourteen feet long. They're the fastest snakes in the world. Their heads are shaped like coffins. Even the insides of their mouths are black. Once, one was found with a full-grown parrot in its belly.
I read about them in my venomous reptiles book. They're for serious one of the coolest snakes alive.
Mom said no.
Then I asked for a rattlesnake. It would be a lot smaller than a mamba.
Still no.
Then I asked for a hedgehog.
No.
"Just a bitty hedgehog," I said. "A pygmy one." Pygmy hedgehogs are tiny and you can feed them cat food. Or mealworms. Or vegetables. Nadia showed me stuff about them on the internet.
Mom sighed.
I told her they're only the size of an egg and they just need a rabbit hutch to live in.
"No!" Mom barked.
All right, then.
When Mom starts barking, it's time to stop asking.
You see, there's no way she'd say yes to Inkling. He is much bigger than a pygmy hedgehog, and he eats a lot more than a rattlesnake.
