Squiggle and Ollie Wake Up In Mr. Li's Office

Is there any better thing than to wake up in a book? A good book. Tasty and colorful and not too thick, but not so you finish it too soon, either.

I'm Squiggle, a bookworm, about 10 years old in bookworm years. A few months ago I woke up in a book--The Origin of Species--on the bookshelf of Mr. Li. I was nestled in the middle of the book, in a cozy space I don't remember making, with my brother, Ollie. After we'd stretched and yawned and eaten two nouns and a verb each for breakfast, we crawled to the edge of the shelf and looked out into the wider world we found ourselves in.

Straight below us was Mr. Li's desk, messy with delicious papers, with a giant old-school computer right in the middle. An overstuffed swivel chair sat in front of the screen, with a window off to the left that Mr. Li could twist around to look out when daydreams called. The right side of the room had four tanks. One had an old, gnarled tortoise that Mr. Li called Turtillian. Another had an aquatic salamander, called an axolotl, named Rose. One had a python Mr. Li called Pythonicus. And the last one had two enormous Madagascar hissing cockroaches. The walls were covered in posters and prints and signs with clever sayings. The floor was covered with musty old carpet. Now it was mostly quiet in the office, except for the hum of Rose's filter pump and faint scurry of roaches in moss. From my perch on the shelf, the view was of a pleasant, inviting place that belonged to a curious and intelligent man.

Just how intelligent, I had yet to learn. But Ollie had awakened on this shelf a full three days earlier than I had, and so he knew much more about the room and Mr. Li than I did. Still groggy, * and wiping part of the letter "r" from the corner of his mouth, Ollie crawled out beside me and said, "Hey Squig. I thought you'd never get up."

"Ollie, how did we get here?"

"Mm mm. I don't know--I think we were in a garage sale and Mr. Li bought our book? I'm not sure. But I've learned some things about Mr. Li, and about our new home. Wanna hear?"

"Sure!"