Ben the Inventor by Robin Stevenson

Chapter One
    Right in front of Ben’s house was a speed bump. It led from Ben’s front gate across the road to his friend Jack’s front gate. Ben and Jack were best friends. It was summer holidays, so every day after breakfast, Jack walked along the top of the speed bump to Ben’s house.
    Today, something was different. Ben knew it as soon as he saw Jack’s face. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    Without a word, Jack turned and pointed back across the street. Ben looked, but he didn’t see anything at first. Just Jack’s wooden fence, the front gate and Jack’s cat, Lulu, sitting in a patch of sunlight and licking her hind leg.

    And then he saw the sign. A big, square, red and white sign with two words on it: FOR SALE .
    â€œI don’t get it,” Ben said. An awful, cold feeling crept into his tummy. “You can’t sell your house. Where would you live?”
    â€œMy mom got a new job,” Jack said. “In Vancouver.” “Vancouver!” Ben stared at him.
    â€œSo we have to move.”
    â€œMove!”
    Jack shrugged. “That’s what she says.”
    â€œTell her you won’t go,” Ben said.
    â€œI already tried that,” Jack said. “Last night.”
    â€œAnd?”
    Jack shook his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. “She said it was one of those things I didn’t have a choice about.”
    Ben’s mother said he didn’t have a choice about a lot of things, such as brushing his teeth twice a day and sharing toys with his little sister, Stella. She also said it about going to school, instead of homeschooling like Jack did, and turning off the computer after twenty minutes of Alien Armada . Still, moving to Vancouver was a very big thing not to have a choice about.
    â€œThat stinks,” Ben said loudly. “It takes half a day to get to Vancouver. You have to go on the ferry and everything.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œWe won’t be able to do stuff together anymore.” Ben felt like he might cry. He scuffed the toe of his shoe on the sidewalk. “It’s not fair.”
    Jack nodded. “That’s what I said.”
    They stared at the sign. Neither of them spoke. Finally Ben said, “Well, I guess we’d better get to work.”
    Jack nodded. “We have inventions to invent.”
    â€œBecause we’re inventors. And inventors invent inventions,” Ben said. He and Jack liked to say this because they liked using the word invent three times in one sentence. Inventors invent inventions, inventors invent inventions. Sometimes they said it over and over again until they laughed so hard they fell down in the grass.
    But today, as they walked to their workshop in Ben’s backyard, neither of them felt much like laughing.

Chapter Two
    Ben’s workshop was in the back corner of his yard. It used to be a garden shed, but now it was all his. It was filled with his stuff—a mountain of treasures he and Jack had collected. There were tin cans and pieces of pipe. There were hubcaps and old license plates. There were empty milk cartons, bits of wire, rusty hinges, broken TV remote controls, pieces of wood, glass jars and a hundred other things.
    It is amazing , Ben thought, how much good stuff people throw out . He knew something most grownups didn’t know: Junk plus Imagination equaled Great Inventions. The Great Invention he and Jack were working on at the moment was a catapult. Ben dragged an old shovel out of the shed.
    â€œYeah!” Jack said. He grabbed a brick. “Let’s use this.”
    Ben laid the shovel on the ground. Jack slid the brick under the middle of the shovel’s handle.
    Ben pushed the blade down with his foot. The other end went up, like a teeter-totter. “Cool. Let’s try it.”
    â€œWe need something to launch,” Jack said.
    Ben looked around. “How about this?” He lifted up a large stone they had painted