Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (42 page)

THE BOOK IN
your hands—which you
paid
for, not just checked out from the library (I’m on to your tricks … besides, can you imagine how many germs call your average library book “home”? I’m just sayin’ …)—wouldn’t have been possible without the complete lack of support from the following persons:

The countless boys and girls who seemed so confident on the outside, yet, if they truly were inside—deep below their flawless complexions and ideal body-fat-to-lean-body-mass ratios—wouldn’t feel the need to put others down in order to uplift themselves.

The tireless teeter-totter of capitalism that keeps us nauseous, seesawing between pictures of ninety-nine-pound supermodels and pitchers of ninety-nine-ounce Super Gulps.

The inventor of German dodgeball.

DALE E. BASYE
, a recovering journalist and advertising copywriter, has written his way out of many a tense situation. He was a film critic, winning several national awards, and studied neon sculpture in art school, which—puzzlingly—never resulted in a consistent income. Dale E. Basye once made a plaster cast of himself in class and passed out, awaking to find himself in class in a plaster cast.

Here’s what Dale E. Basye has to say about his latest book:

“Take a heaping helping of boys and girls, soak them in preadolescence until their bodies are unrecognizable, then blend them together until all lumps of reason have been smoothed into self consciousness. Bake at half the appropriate temperature until half-baked. Now throw the whole mess—and everyone’s expectations—out the window and
onto a group of smug authority figures. Serves: them right
. Heck is like that. And, no matter what anyone tells you, Heck is real. This story is real. Or as real as anything like this can be.”

Dale E. Basye lives in Portland, Oregon, inside of a giant rotating loaf of fiberglass bread. His spinning domicile provides him with an excellent vantage point from which to fight crime, though his principal foe tends to be debilitating vertigo.

This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2010 by Dale E. Basye
Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Bob Dob

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Basye, Dale E.
Blimpo : the third circle of Heck / by Dale E. Basye ; illustrations by Bob Dob. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Eleven-year-old Milton Fauster puts aside his own escape plans to help his sister, Marlo, who is in training to be an underworld secretary, and best friend, Virgil, who is stuck in the circle of Heck reserved for overweight children.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89304-9
[1. Future life—Fiction. 2. Overweight persons—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—
Fiction. 4. Reformatories—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Humorous stories.]
I. Dob, Bob, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.B2938Bli 2010   [Fic]—dc22   2009015801

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