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One of Jeremy's favorite things to do is visit old Mr. Applebaum next door. Mr. A. can build anything and fix everything and his garage is full of neat stuff that overflows into the driveway and the yard. Right now it's the only place Jeremy feels comfortable. Jeremy's best friend, Robbie has started acting tough and unfriendly, and Jeremy finds himself with some secrets—including a forbidden pet—that he can’t talk about at home. He takes refuge at Applebaum's; but even here, Jeremy discovers there can be trouble. And worse, he's afraid it may be his fault.

Behind the Story

My grandfather’s garage was filled from top to bottom with piles of interesting stuff. He was a builder and worked on construction sites so he was always bringing unusual things home. He lived through the depression and never wanted to throw anything out. After a while even his car could not fit in the garage. But I loved to explore in that garage and find treasures. I first wrote this book as a picture book but one of my editors suggested that I really wanted to tell a more complicated story and that I should try writing a chapter book. Once again a lot of the material for this book comes from my own childhood. But the mouse idea came from an incident that happened with my son Peter when I kept trying to catch the mouse in our house and he kept releasing the traps to save the mouse before I could catch it.

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin/Clarion Books

Buy the book: Amazon

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