With the help of Hank’s Top Ten Tips, I finished my homework and got to the good stuff – my costume. My mum was a champ and helped me cut up her red-and-white checked tablecloth. While we were cutting the tabletop out of cardboard, she made one of her famous Randi Zipzer suggestions.

“Hank, sweetie,” she said, eyeing the glass of breadsticks I was planning to put on the tabletop. “Those white-flour breadsticks are not body friendly. Let me give you some whole grain, flaxseed-infused, toasted crisps instead.”

My mum never gives up trying to change the world, one healthy food at a time. She believes in health food like I believe in the New York Mets baseball team. All the way. Do or die. Till the very end. Like last week in our deli, The Crunchy Pickle, she introduced liverwurst made from broccoli instead of liver. Personally, I wouldn’t eat liverwurst no matter what it’s made from. But let me warn you – if you ever find yourself inside the door of The Crunchy Pickle, I suggest you run as fast as you can away from the brocci-wurst. The smell of it has been known to separate a human nose from its face. In fact, the alley at the back of our deli is filled with separated noses bouncing around on their tips.

That night, I was completely involved in making my costume. I didn’t even take a five-minute break for cereal and milk, one of my favourite night-time snacks.

And my mum got really involved in making a costume for Cheerio. Emily and Robert had decided that they wanted him to be a tonsil so they could surround him in their flu-germ costumes. They thought that if he growled at them, it would show how tonsils fight flu germs. After I’d pointed out that no kid in his or her right mind even knows what a tonsil looks like, my mum made a little hat for Cheerio out of cardboard that said I AM A TONSIL. When she tried to put it on him, Cheerio ran away and hid under my bed. He’s a smart dog, that Cheerio. He’s not going to be anyone’s tonsil.

By the time I’d finally finished my costume, it was way past my bedtime. My dad, who doubles as the Bedtime Police in our house, had fallen asleep in his chair doing a crossword. He was probably dreaming of a four-letter word for a web-footed bird related to the goose family.

I’m tempted to describe to you every detail of how I made my costume. But instead, I’m going to let you be surprised at what it looked like.

Sorry, guys. You’re just going to have to read the next chapter.