Gooney Bird and All Her Charms Read Online Free PDF Page B

lunch?”
    Bruno looked up as the children threw away their paper napkins, closed their lunchboxes, and returned their trays. His big brown eyes watched carefully to see if any more crumbs or scraps of food had fallen on the floor. Then, disappointed, he went back to sleep.
    Gooney Bird looked around the multipurpose room as her class prepared to leave. The lunch ladies behind the counter were cleaning up and storing the leftover milk cartons in the big refrigerator. Mr. Furillo was standing in the doorway with his huge broom. Very soon, when all the classes had finished their lunch, the custodian would move the tables to the side and sweep the floor, Bruno following him in hope of crumbs.
    â€œMr. Furillo?” Gooney Bird said politely as she approached the door with the rest of her class. “I have a favor to ask.”
    He listened while she described her request. Then he nodded his head. “Gotcha,” he said.
    Walking back to the second grade classroom quietly, Gooney Bird spoke to Mrs. Pidgeon. “I know we have math this afternoon, and spelling, and recess, but . . .”
    â€œBut what?” Mrs. Pidgeon asked.
    â€œNow that we’ve learned all about the digestive system,” Gooney Bird said, “I think it’s time for Napoleon to make a move.”
    Napoleon had been in the library now for four days. His glasses had become a little lopsided and his book was tilted, about to fall out of his hands. But he still looked like a guy using his brain.
    Every classroom in Watertower Elementary School had been to visit him. Three kindergarten children had been frightened and cried, but most of the students had found Napoleon fascinating. One fourth grade boy, Philip Romano, who had trouble concentrating on schoolwork, announced that from now on he would wear ear muffs, as Napoleon did.
    Sixth-grader Marlon Washington, who was often a troublemaker, announced at first that he thought Mrs. Pidgeon’s second grade was just a bunch of babies acting like big shots because someone gave them a stupid skeleton. But after his class visited the library and Marlon examined Napoleon, he changed his mind. “That is one very cool dude,” he said. “Look at him, using those neurons!”
    Mr. Leroy did not allow any student to have a cell phone in school. But he did have one himself, and he agreed to take a picture of each child standing beside Napoleon. Some of the children tried to make a big toothy smile so that they would resemble the skull, but most looked very serious and solemn in their photographs.
    One mother, Mrs. Gooch, wearing a hat and gardenia perfume, came to the school to complain that having a skeleton in the library was disgusting. It was un-American, she said, like something they might do in a foreign school, maybe in Sweden or a place like that. Mr. Leroy told her that the skeleton was being used for educational purposes and that the children were learning valuable information about the human body. Mrs. Gooch said that her Veronica, a third-grader, was entirely too young to learn anything about the human body. Mr. Leroy listened politely to Mrs. Gooch and then agreed that Veronica could stay in her classroom and read a book while her classmates visited Napoleon, if that’s what her mother wished. Mrs. Gooch said, “That is precisely what I wish!” in a meaningful voice and then went away, and Mr. Leroy sprayed air freshener in his office to get rid of the scent of her gardenia perfume.
    The other children, all but Veronica Gooch, paid very careful attention to Napoleon and what they learned from him. But Mrs. Clancy, the librarian, said that not one single student understood the sign that read MRS. PIDGEON’S SECOND GRADE FINDS THIS HUMERUS . She had to explain it again and again, she reported, even to Mr. Leroy.
    â€œWell, we have to educate them,” Gooney Bird said. “Save that sign about the humerus, Tyrone,” she said. “We can