The Mudshark Detective Agency is on the case in a winning tale from Gary Paulsen, about whom Booklist writes in a starred review, "When it comes to telling funny stories about boys, no one surpasses Paulsen." Mudshark is cool. He's fast-thinking and fast-moving, and with his photographic memory, he's the go-to guy with the answers. Lost your shoe? Your dad's car? Can't find your homework? Ask Mudshark. At least, until the Psychic Parrot takes up residence in the school library. The word in school is that the parrot can out-think Mudshark. And right now, the school needs someone who's good at solving problems. There's an escaped gerbil running the halls, a near-nuclear emergency in the faculty restroom, and an unexplained phenomenon involving disappearing erasers. Once Mudshark solves the mystery of the erasers, he plans to investigate the Psychic Parrot. . . . In Mudshark, Paulsen introduces readers to a resourceful boy who will have kids everywhere thinking, and laughing. Review, FamilyFun , June 2009: "A master of lively, highly accessible prose, Paulsen offers much in this short read, from kooky characters to stringent satire." Gary Paulsen is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people, including three Newbery Honor books: The Winter Room, Hatchet , and Dogsong . His novel The Haymeadow received the Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award. Among his Random House books are Woods Runner ; Notes from the Dog ; Lawn Boy; The Legend of Bass Reeves ; The Amazing Life of Birds ; The Time Hackers ; Molly McGinty Has a Really Good Day ; The Quilt (a companion to Alida's Song and The Cookcamp ); The Glass Café ; How Angel Peterson Got His Name ; Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian books; The Beet Fields ; Soldier's Heart ; Brian's Return , Brian's Winter , and Brian's Hunt (companions to Hatchet ); Father Water , Mother Woods ; Woods Runner ; and five books about Francis Tucket's adventures in the Old West. Gary Paulsen has also published fiction and nonfiction for adults, as well as picture books illustrated by his wife, the painter Ruth Wright Paulsen. Their most recent book is Canoe Days . They live in Alaska and New Mexico. You can visit him on the Web at www.garypaulsen.com. This is the principal. Would the custodian please report to the faculty restroom with a plunger . . . no, wait . . . a shovel and a plunger? And has anybody seen the gerbil from room two oh six?   The Mudshark was cool.   Not because he said he was cool or knew he was or thought it. Not because he tried or even cared.   He just was.   Kind of tall, kind of thin, with a long face, brown eyes and hair and a quick smile that jumped out and went back. When he walked down a hall he didn't just walk, he seemed to move as a part of the hall. He'd suddenly appear out of nowhere, as if he'dalways been there.   Wasn't there.   Then there.   His real name was Lyle Williams and for most of his twelve-year-old life people had just called him Lyle.   But one day, when he'd been playing Death Ball--a kind of soccer mixed with football and wrestling and rugby and mudfighting, a citywide, generations-old obsession that had been banned from school property because of, according to the principal, CertainInsurance Restrictions and Prohibitions Owing to Alarming Health Risks Stemming from the Inhalation and Ingestion of Copious Amounts of Mud--he'd been tripped. Everyone thought he was down for the count, flat on his back, covered in mud. Just then, a runner-kicker-wrestler-mudfightercame too close to him, streaking downfield with the ball, and one of Lyle's hands snaked out and caught the runner by an ankle.   "So fast, it was like a mudshark," Billy Crisper said later. He always watched the animal channel. "Mudsharks lie in the mud and when something comes by, they grab it so fast that even high-speed cameras can't catch it. I didn't even see his hand move,I didn't see so much as a blur."   After that game, no one called him Lyle.   Mudshark's agility had been honed at home, courtesy of his triplet baby sisters--Kara, Sara and Tara. Once they started crawling, his father said that all heck broke loose, because nothing moves faster than a tiny, determined toddler heading toward a breakableor swallowable object. If Mudshark had only had one little sister or maybe even two, his reflexes wouldn't have been so keen, but living under the same roof as three mobile units at one time had increased his range of motion and speed exponentially.   One night after dinner when they were about seven months old, the babies had been placed on a blanket on the floor and were playing with soft toys. Mudshark was doing his homework at the desk in the corner of the family room and his parents were watchingthe news and, frankly, dozing on the couch.   Out of the corner of his eye, Mudshark saw a pink flash.   His head whipped around. Two babies were sitting on the blanket, looking t