Candy Is Dandy Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1: A Tasty Trip

  Chapter 2: Zuckerman’s Secret

  Chapter 3: A Sticky Mystery

  Chapter 4: Josie’s Plan

  Chapter 5: Some Suspicious Grown-ups

  Chapter 6: I Scream for More Clues

  Chapter 7: A Close Call for Bess

  Chapter 8: A Sweet Solution

  1

  A Tasty Trip

  Nancy Drew stared out the school bus window. “When will we get there?” she said.

  “I know. I can’t wait,” agreed Nancy’s best friend Bess Marvin. She was sitting in the seat right behind Nancy. “A class field trip to Zuckerman’s Zonked Candy Factory. My wildest dreams are coming true!”

  “Yeah! All the candy we can eat,” said Bess’s cousin George Fayne. She was sitting next to Nancy.

  Bess and George were as different as two cousins could be. Brown-haired George was tall and loved sports. Bess had long blond hair. She didn’t like to do anything that made her dirty or sweaty. But both cousins loved candy.

  Everybody else in the girls’ third-grade class was excited about the field trip, too. Over the chatter of the other kids, Bess announced, “Nobody’s going to eat more candy than me on this field trip!”

  “Oh, yeah?” yelled a voice a few seats back. It was Josie Blanton. She had the sweetest of all the sweet tooths at Carl Sandburg Elementary.

  “I’ll have you beat easy, Bess,” Josie said. “I even made a candy-eating plan. See?”

  Josie held up her notebook. It had a peppermint pink cover. She opened it. On one page she had printed:

  1) Start with the heavy stuff—chocolates and caramels.

  2) Exercise the jaws with jelly bears and taffy.

  3) Go for anything super-sour.

  4) Finish with long-lasting mints and an all-day sucker.

  “You’re the only person I know who studies for a field trip, Josie,” George said. She rolled her brown eyes.

  “Hey, I take my candy seriously,” Josie answered. “When I grow up, I want to have a candy factory just like Zuckerman’s Zonked. Ow!”

  The bus had lurched to a halt. Josie, who was standing when she should have been sitting, bonked her nose on the seat in front of her. She rubbed her nose grumpily.

  But when she glanced out the window, her scowl turned into a laugh. “Wow!” she yelled.

  Nancy looked, too. She squealed with delight. Zuckerman’s Zonked Candy Factory was a tall brick building. It would have looked ordinary, except every brick was painted a different color of the rainbow.

  “The bricks look like jelly beans!” Bess exclaimed, licking her lips.

  “I can’t wait to see the inside!” George shouted.

  All the kids tumbled into the bus aisle. They clapped their hands and jumped up and down in excitement.

  “Single file, children,” called their teacher, Mrs. Reynolds. Then she led the class off the bus and through the factory’s front door. The door looked like a big, smiling mouth.

  “Wow, I feel like I’m being swallowed by a giant,” Josie said. She shivered gleefully as she walked beneath some huge white teeth.

  “Now I know what a chocolate bar feels like,” Bess joked.

  The factory was even more wonderful inside. Nancy gasped as she gazed at a large, open room filled with candy-making contraptions.

  There were giant, gleaming steel pots with steam bubbling out of them. Moving belts carried chocolate bars from one end of the big room to the other. Lined up against a wall were enormous plastic containers. They were filled with sugar, cocoa, and caramel. The air was filled with a delicious smell.

  “Hey, look at that,” Bess said excitedly. “They’re making one of my favorite candy bars right over there.” She pointed to a corner. Workers in white jumpsuits and hats were busy wrapping creamy squares of candy in rainbow-colored foil.

  “I recognize that wrapper,” Nancy said. “Those are Karamel Krunchettes.”

  “Ooh, look at that thing!” George exclaimed.

  She was pointing at a big steel tub. Sticking out of the side of the tub was a long silver spout. Pouring out of the spout was a stream of bright purple goo. More factory workers were catching the goo in trays with small shapes punched into them.

  “Those must be the molds for Zuckerman’s Sticky Jelly Bugs,” Andrew Leoni said. Andrew was one of the boys in Nancy’s class. He liked anything as long as it was extra yucky.

  “Sticky Jelly Bugs are the coolest,” Andrew said.

  “Yeah,” Jason Hutchings said. He was standing next to Andrew. “Zuckerman’s Sticky Jelly Bugs are way stickier than plain old jelly bears. If you throw a Sticky Jelly Bug at the wall, or at a girl, it will stick just like a real fly!”

  Jason’s friends Mike Minelli and David Berger giggled. All three boys began to flap their arms. Jason stuck out his tongue.

  “Buzzzzzzz,” Mike said.

  “Lookit, we’re Sticky Jelly Bugs!” David yelled.

  “Ick!” Bess cried.

  George rolled her eyes and muttered, “Boys are so gross!”

  Just then a man burst through a nearby doorway. He wore a wrinkled brown suit that matched his smiling, light brown eyes. His hair was gray and wild. It stuck out from his head in big, curly tufts. He was carrying a white canvas bag.

  “Children!” the man cried. “Welcome to my factory. I am your host, Mr. Zuckerman.”

  Mr. Zuckerman gave a deep bow. His fuzzy gray curls bounced. Then he looked up, winked at the children, and straightened his baggy suit.

  “Time for the grand tour,” Mr. Zuckerman announced. “But first we must get dressed.”

  He reached into his bag and pulled out a bunch of hats. They were the same white caps the factory workers were wearing. They were soft and bunchy, like shower caps. Moving from child to child, Mr. Zuckerman quickly passed out all the hats.

  “Hey,” Andrew called. “You gave me three of these funny caps. But I’ve only got one head.”

  “Right you are,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “I want you to put one of the caps over your hair. Then put the other two over your shoes, as I’m doing.”

  Mr. Zuckerman wrapped the caps around his shoes. They made his feet looked like puffy white pillows. Then the factory owner placed his last cap over his fuzzy hair. Finally he put on a long white jacket that looked like a doctor’s coat.

  The kids had to giggle at Mr. Zuckerman’s strange outfit. Of course, once they put on their own shower caps, they looked just as funny as he did.

  “Laugh if you will, kiddies, but this is to keep our factory as clean as possible,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “You may not know it, but you carry all sorts of dust, dirt, and other bad stuff in your clothes and hair.”

  Bess peered at the ends of her shiny blond hair. “But I just had a shampoo last night,” she said with a pout.

  “Even so,” Mr. Zuckerman replied, “we have to keep our factory squeaky-clean. That’s why I wear my white coat here and the workers wear their jumpsuits.”

  Mr. Zuckerman walked to the huge tub of purple goo. He pointed at the silver tub. It practically glimmered under the bright factory lights.

  “You see?” he said, turning to Nancy’s class. “At Zuckerman’s Zonked we take pride in a sparkling clean factory.”

  Mr. Zuckerman grinned and threw his arms out wide.

  CLANK!

  “Oh!” Mr. Zuckerman exclaimed. One of his hands had smacked into the goo spout.

  Nancy gasped as she watched the goo tub begin to spin around in a circle. The spout spun with it. Purple goo streamed from the spout as it whirled around. It sprayed a wide splash of sticky goo on the floor.

  “Eeek!” the kids cried, scrambling away from the stream of goo.

  Finally the tub stopped
spinning—when the goo spout collided with Mr. Zuckerman.

  “Oof!” the factory owner cried. A waterfall of warm purple goo gushed onto his shirt. It coated his white coat and his tie. It covered his pants. It drenched his feet.

  “Talk about sweet,” Josie whispered. She looked a little jealous. “You know, I wouldn’t mind being covered in candy from head to toe.”

  But Mr. Zuckerman was far from pleased.

  “Oh, no!” he cried. He gazed at his sticky suit in dismay. A crowd of factory workers rushed to his aid with wet towels. Mrs. Reynolds tried to help, too.

  As the helpers mopped at Mr. Zuckerman’s clothes, he said to the children, “That was a batch of our Zuckerman’s Sooper Sticky Jelly Bug goo! Oh, it will take days to un-gum myself.”

  Mr. Zuckerman rolled his eyes and said, “And just when I was going to tell you about my big secret!”

  2

  Zuckerman’s Secret

  Secret!” Nancy whispered to Bess. “What could it be?” She waited for Mr. Zuckerman to say something else. But he only grumbled and dabbed at his clothes with a towel. Bess giggled when the towel stuck to Mr. Zuckerman’s coat.

  “When I make sticky candy, it really sticks,” Mr. Zuckerman said. Then he shrugged and turned to the class. “Oh, well. On with the tour, children.”

  Nancy bit her lip. “But what about the secret?” she whispered to George.

  “Maybe we can remind him at the end of the tour,” George whispered back.

  The kids followed Mr. Zuckerman through a maze of candy-making machines. He stopped in front of a metal arm with a pointy end.

  “Here’s the peanut-butter squirter,” Mr. Zuckerman said. He took a tray of small chocolate balls and placed it beneath the arm. Then he pressed a button. The arm began shooting gobs of peanut butter into the balls of chocolate.

  “That’s the coolest thing ever!” George gasped.

  Next Mr. Zuckerman led the class to a row of many small pots. Inside the pots were pretty rainbow-colored liquids.

  “This is the coloring for our Hundred-Color Jawbreakers,” Mr. Zuckerman said with a chuckle. “They were one of my own inventions, I’m proud to say.”

  Then Mr. Zuckerman moved on to a big pot of melted marshmallows. He plucked a tiny chocolate square off a nearby table.

  “Ah, and this is a new candy,” he announced. “You’ll see it in the stores in the next few months.”

  “Hey!” Josie exclaimed. “That chocolate is shaped like a little slice of bread.”

  “Right you are,” Mr. Zuckerman said with a grin. “I’m calling the candy Teensy-Tiny Nut ’n’ Fluffs. They’re little sandwiches of chocolate bread, whipped marshmallow, and peanut butter.”

  “Yum!” Bess squealed. She jumped up and down.

  “Oh, does that sound good to you?” Mr. Zuckerman said with a twinkle in his eye. “You know, I haven’t got the recipe just right yet. That’s why we have a special tasting area.”

  He led the class to a small room with a big table in the middle of it. It was piled high with candy—including Teensy-Tiny Nut ’n’ Fluffs. Bess gasped with joy.

  “I have to eat a lot of sweets to make sure the recipes are just right,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “Usually I do all of the candy tasting myself. But sometimes I need help.”

  “Say no more!” Josie cried. She ran to the table and popped a Teensy-Tiny Nut ’n’ Fluff into her mouth.

  “Oh, Mr. Zuckerman,” she said with her mouth full. “I think this recipe is just perfect!”

  “I’ll see about that,” Bess said. She ran to Josie’s side and gobbled one of the little sandwiches. “Delicious!” she said.

  The rest of the kids quickly joined in.

  “Oh, look. A Zonked Licorice Snake!” Andrew Leoni cried. He picked a black, scary-looking snake off the table. Then he bit off its head.

  George curled her lip at Andrew.

  “Yuck!” she exclaimed. “Why would you eat a snake when you can have a set of Frostee Jewels instead?” She grabbed a necklace of pretty pink and blue candies off the pile on the table. She nibbled one of the jewels before putting on the necklace.

  “You said it!” Nancy said. She was licking a Cherry Baby, a red lollipop in the shape of a baby.

  “Please finish your candy before we go to the next room, children,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “It’s the most special room of all.”

  “What could be better than the candy-tasting room?” Bess asked. She licked whipped marshmallow off her fingers.

  The class followed Mr. Zuckerman down a hallway. The hall had many twists and turns to it. On the wall were pictures of Zuckerman’s Zonked candies.

  “Look, those are Quake Puffs,” Jason Hutchings said. He pointed to one of the pictures. “They fizz and explode in your mouth. They’re so cool!”

  “My favorite is Zoobers,” Josie retorted. She pointed to a picture of animal-shaped chocolate chews.

  “Zoobers are okay,” Mike Minelli said. “But I like Zuckerman’s Chocolate Eyeballs the best.”

  “If it’s gross, you can bet Mike Minelli will eat it,” George said.

  Finally the group arrived at a big wooden door.

  “Here we are,” Mr. Zuckerman said, throwing the door open.

  The kids found themselves peering into a beautiful library. In the middle of the room stood a big wooden table and some matching chairs. The shelves along the walls were filled with old books. There were big books and little books and books with candy-colored covers.

  “Books!” Andrew said, sounding mad. “Awww, where’s the candy?”

  “Without these books, there would be no candy,” Mr. Zuckerman replied. He took off his sticky white coat and carefully hung it over the back of a chair. Then he took some books off the shelves. He laid them on the table so the children could see them.

  “These are my treasured candy cookbooks,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “Many of them were written by my grandfather Abraham Zuckerman. He was the one who opened Zuckerman’s Zonked Candy Factory. That was back in 1925.”

  “Wow!” Josie said. “Maybe someday when I’m a candy maker, I’ll have a library like this.”

  Mr. Zuckerman reached onto a high shelf for some very large books. They were bound in a creamy brown leather. “Here’s my grandfather’s best work—his chocolate encyclopedia. It covers every Zuckerman’s Zonked chocolate treat, from Abe’s Almond Bars to Zoobers.”

  Bess raised her hand. When Mr. Zuckerman called on her, she asked, “Did you write any of these recipe books, Mr. Zuckerman?”

  “Indeed I did,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “You see, crazy new candy recipes are a Zuckerman family tradition. I’m always trying to come up with exciting new treats. In fact, I was going to tell you about my latest brainstorm, wasn’t I?”

  “This must be the secret he was talking about,” Nancy whispered to George.

  “Children, I have dreamed up an incredible new candy,” Mr. Zuckerman said proudly. “It is the perfect sweet! It’s sure to make me millions.”

  “What is it?” Josie blurted, forgetting to raise her hand first.

  Mr. Zuckerman walked over to his white coat on the chair. He reached into the coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He waved the paper in the air.

  “Here it is—the secret formula,” he said. “This candy will be as creamy as chocolate and as chewy as caramel. It’s as long-lasting as an all-day sucker. And if you bite down on it, it squirts neon colors onto your tongue. I’ve almost got the recipe just right. You see, the trick is in the maple syrup. Then you . . .”

  Mr. Zuckerman stopped talking and laughed. “Well, I can’t give away my secret recipe, can I? You’ll taste it soon enough, children. But for now, look but don’t touch.”

  He held the paper in the air for a moment. Then he stuffed it back into the pocket of his white coat.

  “Well, I think we’ve seen enough of the library,” Mr. Zuckerman said. He picked up the candy cookbooks from the table and put them back on the shelves.

/>   Mrs. Reynolds looked at her watch. Then she said, “Thank you for the wonderful tour, Mr. Zuckerman. It’s time for us to go back to school now.”

  “I can’t let you leave without a few goodie bags, can I?” Mr. Zuckerman declared. “I’ve already packed up some sweets for you. They’re in my office. I’ll be right back.”

  Mr. Zuckerman swept out of the library.

  “More candy? I can’t believe it!” Bess said happily.

  While they waited for Mr. Zuckerman, Nancy’s classmates drifted to different corners of the library. Nancy wandered over to one wall. She gazed up at the high shelf where Mr. Zuckerman kept the cookbooks with the pretty brown covers.

  “What big, beautiful books,” Nancy whispered. Then she giggled. “They even look like chocolate.”

  Just then Mr. Zuckerman returned to the library.

  “Here you go, children,” he said. He passed out bulging bags of candy. “A few treats for everybody. Now, let me put my coat back on, and I’ll walk you to the door.”

  Carefully Mr. Zuckerman slipped on his sticky coat. Then he led the class back through the factory. They were just passing the Teensy-Tiny Nut ’n’ Fluff table when Mr. Zuckerman slipped a hand into his coat pocket.

  “What!” he shouted. He stumbled to a stop. He began shoving his hands into every one of his coat pockets. He checked his suit pockets, too. Then his face went white. “My secret recipe!” he cried. “My fortune. It’s gone!”

  3

  A Sticky Mystery

  The secret recipe is missing?” Nancy gasped. “I can’t believe it.”

  “What could have happened to it?” Bess cried.

  Mr. Zuckerman dropped to his hands and knees. He began searching the factory floor for the missing scrap of paper.

  “Where could it be?” he muttered.

  “Class,” Mrs. Reynolds called, “let’s help Mr. Zuckerman look for his recipe.”

  “Oh, thank you, children,” Mr. Zuckerman called. He was crawling next to the big pot of melted marshmallows. “Be careful, though. Stay away from the candy-making machines.”

  Nancy ducked beneath a table to look for the recipe. She felt around the floor but didn’t find a thing. When she popped her head out, she saw all her classmates crawling around the plastic sugar bins or peeking into corners. All of them except Josie Blanton. Josie was standing near the door. She looked as if she was about to cry.