THE Epic Adventures of Whiz Grass and Poot Berry

As you should have guessed by the title, this is not the standard bedtime story with a princess and a prince and an evil stepparent and some sort of magic spell. Not one castle, nor trolls, not even an enchanted forest is tucked with loving care into this bedtime story. To be totally honest about the whole shebang, it's not so much a bedtime story as a bedtime epic event. An explanation may be in order right about now. There are 30 Adventures in this saga, to be read in order as bedtime stories. No skipping around, mind you, because it will make even less sense if you do that, so when you get to the Temple of the Belchmonkeys and your mind is not totally prepared for it, well, that's a whole different bucket of pickles altogether. And you could rip through more than one story in a night, but that might just make your kids loopy. 30 Adventures, 30 nights, so you're pretty much covered for a month. Now, somebody's going to screech that some months have 31 days (thanks, May and October and you other troublemakers for screwing this up) and so you have a day left over. And there's some real hollering going on about the February problem, and how if you read this story during that month, even during a leap year, you still have extra story left over. The thing is, the story is 30 nights long because it's a nice round number (unlike 31, which is prime, for crying out loud) and that's how long the story takes to tell. So there. The important idea is that this is an interactive story. Not a passive story where your kid lays there like an unfortunate lump on the mattress and you yammer on until you bore the poor child to sleep. This story has a narrator reading the action lines (that's you, sport). There are also 21 different voices in the tale, all of which you'll have fun doing. Even better, let your child read along and read a voice or two. The full list of voices is on the next few pages, plus what we think they sound like, although you can change them pretty much any way you want. It's not like we're keeping score. Also, you will find action lines sprinkled throughout. You'll recognize these because they're in italics so they look like they're in motion, hence we call them action lines and they instruct you or your offspring to do certain things. Be nice and gentle, since you'll have to start a pillow fight in Adventure 1. Remember, you're bigger. Play nice.