What’s your bravest moment?
“I got a shot at the doctor’s office. Then they gave me a sticker.” —Noa
“Going to school all by myself, without my big sister there.” —Brooke
“[Going] to sleepaway camp, which meant being away from my parents for seven whole weeks!” —Harrison
“My first big dance performance.” —Gus
“It’s going to be riding on a hoverboard.”—Charlie
Visit all the states with Finn and Molly in
#1 Let’s Mooove!
#2 The Show Must Go On
#3 Texas Treasure
#4 Escape from Camp California
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Courtney Sheinmel and Bianca Turetsky
Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2020 by Stevie Lewis
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sheinmel, Courtney, author. | Turetsky, Bianca, author. | Lewis, Stevie, illustrator.
Title: Escape from Camp California / Courtney Sheinmel and Bianca Turetsky; illustrated by Stevie Lewis.
Description: New York: Random House, [2020] | Series: Magic on the map; #4 “A Stepping Stone Book.” | Audience: Ages 6–9.
Summary: The magical RV takes twins Finn and Molly to Northern California, where they help keep campers safe during a wildfire.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019038358 | ISBN 978-1-9848-9572-1 (trade) ISBN 978-1-9848-9573-8 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-1-9848-9574-5 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Recreational vehicles—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Twins—Fiction. | Camps—Fiction. | Wildfires—Fiction. | Fires—Fiction. | California, Northern—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.S54124 Es 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9781984895745
This book has been officially leveled by using the F&P Text Level Gradient™ Leveling System.
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
Penguin Random House LLC supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to publish books for every reader.
a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
For Lucy Ann and Oliver David
—C.S.
For Charlie and Freya
—B.T.
Contents
Cover
Visit All the States with Finn and Molly in Magic on the Map!
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
United States of America Map
Prologue
Chapter One: Blue and Gold
Chapter Two: Eureka
Chapter Three: Dr. Molly Parker
Chapter Four: Buddies
Chapter Five: The Mess Hall
Chapter Six: Any Way the Wind Blows
Chapter Seven: Emergency Camp Meeting
Chapter Eight: Bird’s-Eye View
Chapter Nine: The Treehouse
Chapter Ten: Great Escape
Chapter Eleven: Brave
Chapter Twelve: Homeward Bound
Authors’ Note
California State Facts
California Map
On the last day of second grade, twins Finn and Molly Parker came home to find a camper in their driveway. It was white with orange and yellow stripes, a rounded roof, and three windows on each side. It looked just like an ordinary camper.
That night, Molly and Finn couldn’t sleep. They snuck outside to check out the camper. Finn climbed into the driver’s seat and spun the wheel around. He and Molly knew that they couldn’t go anywhere. They didn’t have the keys. And besides, they were too young to drive!
But something weird happened…the camper started talking to them. It wasn’t an ordinary camper, after all—it had a PET!
Not a pet like a cat or a dog, or even an iguana. This PET stood for:
Planet
Earth
Transporter.
PET explained that it used the information superhighway to travel anywhere in the world, in a matter of seconds. And then, faster than you could say, “Buckle up,” the camper took off!
When it landed, the doors popped open. “I’ll be back when your work here is done,” PET said, and it shut down.
Molly and Finn didn’t know where they were or what in the world their work was. But they knew there was only one way to find out, and they headed outside.
Where will the magic camper take Finn and Molly next? You’ll just have to keep reading to find out….
Molly Parker was finishing up her latest friendship bracelet when her twin brother, Finn, knocked on her door.
“Come in,” Molly said. She spoke softly so her parents wouldn’t overhear. It was very important that they think Molly and Finn were both sound asleep.
Finn opened the door. “Ready to go?” he whispered.
“Almost,” Molly said. “Just one more knot.”
Finn tiptoed into the room and stood over his sister. “Blue and gold,” he said. “Cool. Did you pick that for the Kansas City Royals?”
“Huh?” Molly said.
“Or the Milwaukee Brewers?” he asked.
Molly snipped the end of the bracelet with her scissors. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Baseball teams, obviously,” Finn said. “The Royals’ and the Brewers’ colors are both blue and gold.”
“Oh,” Molly said. “No, I wasn’t thinking about the teams. I just like the way the colors look together.” She held the bracelet to her wrist. “Tie this on for me?”
“We have to go,” Finn said.
“Tie this for me, and then we’ll go,” she said.
“Fine,” Finn said.
“Don’t knot it too tightly,” Molly warned. “I need to be able to take it off so I can give it away.”
“I know, I know,” Finn said with a roll of his eyes.
“But don’t tie it too loosely, either,” Molly added. “I don’t want it to fall off.”
“There,” Finn said. “I tied it just right. Now can we go?”
“Yep!” Molly said, a little too loudly.
“Shh,” Finn warned.
Molly pretended to zip her mouth shut. She put on her bunny slippers. Then she and Finn tiptoed out to the hallway. Their parents’ door was shut. The coast was clear. They walked downstairs, as quiet as mice.
“Wha
t would Mom and Dad think if we told them that we’d been to three states since the beginning of summer vacation?” Finn whispered.
“They’d never believe us,” Molly whispered back.
She pushed open the front door. Finn gently closed it behind them. They ran across the lawn, yanked open the camper door, and scrambled in.
“We made it,” Finn said. “Phew!”
Molly walked to the back of the camper, where a map of the world was pinned onto a bulletin board. She and Finn had put four pushpins in the map so far—one in their home state of Ohio, where they’d lived their whole lives. The three other pins were in each of the places they’d gone: Colorado, New York, and Texas.
Molly touched the tip of her finger to the pushpins and felt little sparks.
“Come on,” Finn called from the front, where he was already sitting in the passenger seat. “It’s your turn. We can’t get started till you’re up here! You know how strict PET is about these rules!”
Molly jogged toward the front. “Do you think they’re PET’s rules or Professor Vega’s rules?” she asked.
Professor Vega worked at the college with Finn and Molly’s dad. She had owned the camper before trading it for Mr. Parker’s car. But Finn and Molly didn’t know anything else about her.
Finn shrugged. Molly sat down in the driver’s seat. As soon as she did, the TV screen lit up—first a flash of white, then blue, then red letters that spelled out “HELLO AGAIN.”
“Hi, PET!” Finn cried.
“Hello, Finn,” a robotic voice replied.
“Hello from me, too,” Molly said.
“Molly, I’m glad to hear your voice,” PET said. “Have you thought about where you’d like to go?”
“Yes, I have,” Molly said. “I want to go where help is needed.”
“Wherever we go, help will be needed,” Finn said. “PET told us that last time.”
“That’s right,” PET said. “Lots of destinations to choose from, but you can only pick one of them. And time’s a-wasting.”
The word “TICKTOCK” flashed on PET’s screen.
“I can’t decide,” Molly said. “Will you pick for me?”
“You bet I—” Finn started.
“Not you,” Molly said. “PET. You and I don’t know who needs help the most.”
“Hmm…,” PET said. “Where to go? Where to go? We could go north…or we could go east…but, yes, I believe I have just the place….”
“I bet it’s Kansas City!” Finn cried.
“Do you mean the Kansas City in Kansas or Missouri?” Molly asked.
“I don’t know,” Finn said. “Maybe neither. We could be going to the state of Milwaukee.”
“Milwaukee isn’t a state,” Molly said.
“Sure it is,” Finn said.
“No, it’s a city in the state of Wisconsin.”
“Close enough,” Finn said.
“Buckle up, buckaroos!” PET called, and they were off.
“Check out the feathers on those birds!” Finn said.
Molly leaned over to look out her brother’s window. The birds outside had dark feathers sticking straight up from their heads.
“Ooh,” she said. “They must be a type of quail. It’s weird that they’re flying.”
“They’re birds,” Finn said. “They have wings. Of course they’re flying.”
“Just because a bird has wings doesn’t mean it likes to fly,” Molly said. “It just so happens that quail would rather run along the ground. Unless something on the ground scares them. Then they can fly up super fast.”
Finn glanced down. “Everything looks fine on the ground,” he said. “Check out those flowers.” He pointed to the rolling hills, which were dotted with thousands—maybe millions—of tiny orange flowers.
“And check that out,” Molly said. She pointed toward a body of water.
“Oh, is that the ocean again?” Finn asked. “Like when we went to New York?”
“Nah,” Molly said. “That’s not big enough to be an ocean.”
“It looks pretty big to me,” Finn said.
“But there’s a bridge,” Molly said. “Oceans don’t usually have bridges, and this one…oh my goodness!”
“What?”
“The bridge is orange, same as the flowers,” Molly said. “You know what that means?”
Finn gave his sister a blank stare. “Uh…”
“It means that bridge is the GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE!” she cried.
“Cool,” Finn said.
“Cool?” Molly cried. “That’s all you have to say about being in California?”
“California?” Finn said. “Holy guacamole!”
“That’s more like it,” Molly said.
But now the Golden Gate Bridge was behind them. The camper flew over a forest dense with trees that stretched over a hundred feet in the air. They dropped down into a small clearing and landed with a thud.
“I’ll be back—” PET started.
“We know, we know,” Finn said. “You’ll be back when our work here is done.”
PET’s screen went dark and the camper doors popped open.
“Ready to go?” Molly asked.
“You bet I am,” Finn said.
The twins stepped onto the mossy floor of the forest. Molly noticed that Finn’s pajamas had been replaced with navy shorts and a white T-shirt. “EUREKA” was written across the front of his shirt in gold letters. When Molly glanced down, she saw that she was in the exact same outfit.
“We’re dressed like twins,” she said.
“We are twins,” Finn said.
“Yeah, but we’re not twins who dress the same,” Molly said. “This must be some kind of uniform. What is the Eureka team?”
“Don’t know,” Finn said. Suddenly, he felt nervous. He reached up and checked his head. Phew. His trusty Moonwalkers baseball cap was still there, right where it belonged.
“You don’t know something about baseball?” Molly asked, incredulous.
“I know all the major-league teams,” Finn said. “But there are way more minor-league and Little League teams. Even the biggest baseball expert in the world wouldn’t be able to memorize all of them. Besides, these could be uniforms for a completely different sport. One where you’d need to be wearing these.” He lifted up a foot to show off his hiking boots.
“Maybe we’re supposed to hike that mountain over there,” Molly said. “That could be where our work is.”
“But then why did PET drop us off here, in the forest?” Finn asked.
Molly shrugged.
“Hello?” a voice called. “Hello, anyone over there?”
Seconds later, a woman wearing the same EUREKA T-shirt and navy shorts walked through a break in the trees.
“Hey, friends,” she said. “What are you doing over here?”
“Uh…,” Finn said.
He glanced back toward the camper, but it had disappeared.
“Do you need any help?” the woman asked.
“Actually, we were just going to ask you the same thing,” Molly said.
“Well, aren’t you two kind,” the woman said. “What are your names? I didn’t catch them at orientation.”
Molly didn’t know what orientation the woman was talking about, but she answered the question anyway.
“I’m Molly, and this is my brother, Finn,” she said. “We’re twins.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Molly and Finn. My name is Danielle. Come join me at the lake. Your Camp Eureka friends are finishing up the morning swim.”
“Camp?” Molly said. “We’re at camp? In California?”
“Well, of course you are,” Danielle said, giving Molly a funny look. “You didn’t just get dropped here out of nowhere.”
The twins shared a glance.
They followed Danielle through the trees into a large clearing.
“Oh wow,” Molly said.
Danielle and the twins stood beside a gray clapboard boathouse. An enormous blue lake stretched out in front of them. Dozens of campers were swimming, canoeing, kayaking, and stand-up paddleboarding. A couple were even trying to windsurf, though there wasn’t very much wind for it.
“Holy guacamole,” Finn said.
“You can say that again,” Molly told him.
“Holy guacamole,” he repeated.
Danielle grinned. “I’d say you two should suit up and get out there, but we don’t have a lot of time left for group swim.”
“That’s okay, but—” Molly said.
“Hey, Danielle,” a boy called.
“I’m being paged,” Danielle told the twins. “Hold that thought. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
Finn turned around in a circle, taking everything in. Then he looked at his sister. “What should we do while we wait?” he asked. “There’s a rock wall over there, an art studio over there, and tennis courts over there. I can’t see what’s all the way over there—maybe it’s a baseball diamond!”
“I think we should stay here and watch the swimmers,” Molly said. “Our work could be rescuing someone who goes out too deep.”
“I doubt it,” Finn said. “See those lifeguards? They’re watching the swimmers.”
“We should watch them anyway, in case the sun gets in the lifeguards’ eyes. They’ll need us to shout and alert them.”
“Well then, let’s sit on those rocks,” Finn said, pointing to a jetty across the way. He and Molly scrambled over. It wasn’t until they got there that they noticed a girl with thick, dark hair sitting in the shadows of a tall tree. Even though she was wearing a bathing suit, both her suit and her hair were dry.
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