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When ten-year-old Nina’s beloved Sock Museum vanishes overnight, she discovers a shy sock-hoarding creature in the building’s hidden tunnels. With a chatty washer, a lint guide, and neighbors in tow, Nina untangles chaos into a hilarious Sock Swap, making a new friend and an Official Matcher along the way.
Maple Court was the sort of apartment building that smelled like cinnamon toast in the mornings and tomato soup in the afternoons. The lobby tiles were checkerboard blue and cream, always a little damp from umbrellas and scooter wheels. In the elevator, a crooked mirror stretched everyone’s face into surprising shapes. Ten-year-old Nina liked to make fish lips at it and then practice her serious-detective face. The mirror usually preferred fish.
Nina lived on the fourth floor with her dad, who labeled everything in the kitchen and then forgot where he’d stuck the labels. She kept a shoe box under her bed filled with googly eyes and glue, because she believed no object was truly boring once it had a silly face. Her most cherished hobby, however, was the Sock Museum. It started as a clothesline strung across her room, but had expanded to two lines, then three, and finally a zigzag from window to bookshelf to bedpost like a colorful clothes spiderweb.
Each sock had a name card. There was Captain Stripebeard, a long knee sock with tiny mustaches printed all over. There was Princess Daisy-Toe, lime green with white flowers. There was Mr. Sneak, a plain gray ankle sock that always slid off the hanger, as if planning a getaway. Nina wrote biographies for them, the way some kids write about explorers or astronauts. Captain Stripebeard reportedly spoke six languages and once rescued a glue stick from a volcano of crayons.
Socks came to the museum from all over Maple Court. Ms. Gomez, who taught trombone and watered her rubber plant with a pink watering can, had given Nina three polka-dot orphans. The twins from 2A, Sam and Lily, donated anything they found in the laundry room, even if it had tiny dragons on it and most definitely belonged to Sam. “Consider it culture,” Lily had declared, balancing a sock on her head like a crown.
The museum hummed with soft cottony pride. Nina imagined nighttime tours with flashlight beams and whispered facts, though she never actually took visitors after sunset. She sat on her rug, admiring a new addition: a blue sock with glittery stars. “Welcome, Stella Spark,” she announced. She clipped the starry sock beside Princess Daisy-Toe and stepped back. Perfect. Her room looked like a parade had decided to float in the air and never leave.