Welcome to Centerburg! Where you can win a hundred dollars by eating all the doughnuts you want; where houses are built in a day; and where a boy named Homer Price can foil four slick bandits using nothing but his wits and pet skunk.   The comic genius of Robert McCloskey and his wry look at small-town America has kept readers in stitches for generations! Robert McCloskey (1914-2003) wrote and illustrated some of the most honored and enduring children's books ever published. He grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, and spent time in Boston, New York, and ultimately Maine, where he and his wife raised their two daughters. The first ever two-time Caldecott Medal winner, for Make Way for Ducklings and Time of Wonder , McCloskey was also awarded Caldecott Honors for Blueberries for Sal, One Morning in Maine, and Journey Cake, Ho! by Ruth Sawyer.  He was declared a Living Legend by the Library of Congress in 2000.  You can see some of his best-loved characters immortalized as statues in Boston's Public Garden and Lentil Park in Hamilton, Ohio. HOMER PRICE Robert McCloskey HOMER PRICE lives two miles out of Centerburg, where Route 56 meets 56A, but most of his friends and relatives live in town. They include Aunt Aggy and Uncle Ulysses, the Sheriff and the boys, Miss Terwilliger, Miss Naomi Enders, great-great-great granddaughter of Ezekiel Enders who founded Centerburg and who owned the precious formula for making Cough Syrup and Elixir of Life Compound. While Centerburg is not exactly nosey, precious little happens that the good citizens do not know. In six preposterous tales, Robert McCloskey takes a good look at the face of mid-western America with humorous and affectionate eyes. No matter how old or young the reader, the strange skulduggery of the Sensational Scent, the extravagant affair of the Doughnuts, the breathtaking suspense of “Mystery Yarn”, the doleful defeat of The Super-Duper, the puzzling problem of Michael Murphy’s musical Mousetrap, and the Great Pageant of One Hundred and Fifty Years of Centerburg Progress Week, will reduce him to helpless laughter. Homer Price has the world well under control. HOMER PRICE BY ROBERT McCLOSKEY   THE CASE OF THE SENSATIONAL SCENT   THE CASE OF THE SENSATIONAL SCENT ABOUT two miles outside of Centerburg where route 56 meets route 56A there lives a boy named Homer. Homer’s father owns a tourist camp. Homer’s mother cooks fried chicken and hamburgers in the lunch room and takes care of the tourist cabins while his father takes care of the filling station. Homer does odd jobs about the place. Sometimes he washes windshields of cars to help his father, and sometimes he sweeps out cabins or takes care of the lunch room to help his mother. When Homer isn’t going to school, or doing odd jobs, or playing with other boys, he works on his hobby which is building radios. He has a workshop in one corner of his room where he works in the evenings. Before going to bed at night he usually goes down to the kitchen to have a glass of milk and cookies because working on radios makes him hungry. Tabby, the family cat, usually comes around for something to eat too. One night Homer came down and opened the ice box door, and poured a saucer of milk for Tabby and a glass of milk for himself. He put the bottle back and looked to see if there was anything interesting on the other shelves. He heard footsteps and felt something soft brush his leg so he reached down to pet Tabby. When he looked down the animal drinking the milk certainly wasn’t a cat! It was a skunk! Homer was startled just a little but he didn’t make any sudden motions, because he remembered what he had read about skunks. They can make a very strong smell that people and other animals don’t like. But the smell is only for protection, and if you don’t frighten them, or hurt them, they are very friendly. While the skunk finished drinking the saucer of milk, Homer decided to keep it for a pet because he had read somewhere that skunks become excellent pets if you treat them kindly. He decided to name the skunk Aroma. Then he poured out some more milk for Aroma, and had some more himself. Aroma finished the second saucer of milk, licked his mouth, and calmly started to walk away. Homer followed and found that Aroma’s home was under the house right beneath his window. During the next few days Homer did a lot of thinking about what would be the best way to tame Aroma. He didn’t know what his mother would think of a pet skunk around the house but he said to himself Aroma has been living under the house all this time and nobody knew about it, so I guess it will be all right for it to keep on being a secret. He took a saucer of milk out to Aroma every evening when nobody was looking and in a few weeks Aroma was just as tame as a puppy. Homer thought it would be nice if he could bring Aroma up to his room because it would be good to have company while he worked building radios. So he got an old basket and tied a rope to the handle to