For Adam, who makes the Big Wide World a better place.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Potter, Ellen, 1963-author. | Sala, Felicita, illustrator.
Title: The bog beast / story by Ellen Potter ; art by Felicita Sala.
Description: New York : Amulet Books, 2020. | Series: Big Foot and Little Foot book 4 | Audience: Ages 6 to 9. | Summary: On Bimbling Day, when young Sasquatches hope to earn the right to explore the North Woods on their own, Hugo, Boone, and Gigi become stranded and encounter strange and mysterious creatures.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020009344 | ISBN 9781419743221 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781683357919 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Sasquatch-Fiction. | Friendship-Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers-Fiction. | Monsters-Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.P8518 Bog 2020 | DDC [E]-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009344
ISBN 978-1-4197-4322-1
eISBN 978-1-68335-791-9
Text copyright © 2020 Ellen Potter
Illustrations copyright © 2020 Felicita Sala
Book design by Brenda E. Angelilli
Published in 2020 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
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The Big Foot and Little Foot series
Book One: Big Foot and Little Foot
Book Two: The Monster Detector
Book Three: The Squatchicorns
Book Four: The Bog Beast
Book Five: The Gremlin’s Shoes
Deep in the cold North Woods, there lived a young Sasquatch named Hugo. He was bigger than you but smaller than me, and he was hairier than both of us. He lived in apartment 1G in the very back of Widdershins Cavern with his mother and father and his older sister, Winnie.
Hugo was hopping with excitement that morning because it was Bimbling Day! He brushed his hair very quickly—or as quickly as a Sasquatch can. Remember, Sasquatches have an awful lot of hair to brush. At breakfast, he shoveled down his oatmeal and gooseberries so fast that he choked on it and a gooseberry flew out of his nose.
“Slow down, pal,” Hugo’s dad said.
But Hugo couldn’t slow down. Bimbling Day was a very important day for squidges (a squidge is what you call a young Sasquatch). Bimbling Day was the first day squidges went out into the North Woods all by themselves. The teacher gave each squidge a list of things to collect in the woods, sort of like a scavenger hunt. If a squidge collected all of those things, they earned a Bimble Badge. That meant they could go into the North Woods on their own whenever they liked. If they didn’t collect everything on the list, they had to wait a whole year to try again.
Hugo couldn’t wait to bimble (a Sasquatch word for roaming the woods and finding things). He loved the greeny-ness and the sunshiny-ness of the North Woods. But most of all, he loved Ripple Worm River, which twisted and turned through the woods like a giant, glittering worm. The best thing about the river was that his friend Boone lived on the banks of it in a little blue house with a red roof.
When it was time to leave for school, Hugo’s mom looked him over carefully. She brushed some stray hairs from his shoulders. Sasquatches shed a lot during the spring.
“You’ll be careful today, won’t you, Hugo?” Mom said in her worried voice.
“Of course I will,” Hugo told her.
“Yeah, you don’t want to wind up like Annabelle Loody,” his sister, Winnie, said in a spooky voice.
“Who’s that?” Hugo asked.
Hugo’s mom and dad exchanged a look.
“Don’t let her scare you,” Dad said to Hugo. He reached out and wiggled Hugo’s ear, which is kind of like when a Human tousles another Human’s hair. “You’ll tell us all about your adventures when you come home.”
“If you come home,” Winnie whispered to him as they left the apartment.