Memo: For Ministry of Strange, Unusual, and Impossible Things Operatives Only RE: The Ministry of SUITs by Paul Gamble (winner of the Eilís Dillon award for a first children's book) A series of strange incidents have been reported in Belfast: * Oddball kids are going missing * There are several unconfirmed signs of pirates. * A wild bear known to be a very sore loser at musical statues has escaped from the museum and is on the rampage. Fortunately, our newest recruits, Jack Pearse, a curious boy skilled at logical thinking and seeing what's actually there, and Trudy Emerson, the most dangerous girl in his school, are on the case. As per Ministry policy, they are currently being trained in the use of The Speed (patent pending) and will have full access to Ministry supplies (assuming they manage to navigate the paperwork without going insane), so we are confident that they will succeed in their mission to discover and foil this villainous plot. Please provide all assistance possible, as a) they don't know who they are actually up against, b) the world is much stranger than they realized, and c) they are only 12 and have to be in bed by 10 p.m. P.S.-Could all Ministry operatives who have borrowed dinosaurs in the past two weeks please return them? We're running low on inventory.

Paul Gamble