Gooney the Fabulous Read Online Free PDF Page B

thinking deeply.
    Then she opened her eyes and grinned. "YES!" she said. "Got it!"
    "What's the answer?" Mrs. Pidgeon asked.
    Gooney Bird took Nicholas's hand. She tapped her foot the way Tyrone always did."
You and me, me and you,
"she chanted."
Gonna be a secret between us two, cuz the teacher
dunno and the class dunno, but me and you, we be stars of the show!
"
    Gooney Bird grinned. "You'll see, Mrs. Pidgeon," she said. "It'll be the best
suddenly
ever!"

8.

    The words BUNNY and TORTOISE had now been added to the list on the board. Ben and Tricia had told the well-known story of the race between the two, the race won by the slow, plodding tortoise (Tricia, the tortoise, had worn old leather gloves, wrinkled and brown, on both hands and both feet) because the foolish hare had been so certain of winning that he had stopped to play and to nap along the way. Ben had attached a cotton ball to the seat of his blue jeans. "I am never ever embarrassed," he had said again, wiggling his behind with its fluffy white puff of a tail.
    "I think we all know the moral of that fable," Mrs. Pidgeon said."
Slow and steady wins the race!
"
    Ben hip-hopped back to his desk, and Tricia slid her gloved feet slowly across the wooden floor until she reached hers.
    "Me next? Oh, please, me next?" Barry Tuckerman, as usual, had his hand in the air.
    "Do we have time for one more today?" Gooney Bird asked.
    Mrs. Pidgeon nodded. "Just one," she said.
    "Okay, Barry." Gooney Bird pointed to him.
    "You can't be a bear!" Beanie said. "I already did bear!"
    "Or a bunny," added Ben, who was turned around in his seat trying to remove his cotton-ball tail.
    Barry Tuckerman came to the front of the room.
    "He doesn't have a costume!" Malcolm called out. "You're supposed to have a costume! Barry doesn't have a—!"
    Mrs. Pidgeon put her calm-down arm over Malcolm's shoulders. "Shhh," she said in a low voice. "Barry will explain."
    Barry Tuckerman bowed to the class. "I have as much of a costume as Tricia did," he said. "She just had gloves.
    "Tyrone only had a pie tin for dinosaur armor. And Ben just had a cotton-ball tail.
    "You don't have to have
clothes
for a costume. I have this." He held up something silver and shiny.
    The children all peered toward it, trying to see what the small shiny disk was. "It's money!" Keiko said.
    "Correct," Barry replied. "It's five cents. It's a nickel."
    "Why do you have a nickel?" asked Beanie.
    "I'll explain in a minute. Anybody got a nickel?" Barry asked the class. Several children reached for their pockets. They shook their heads.
    "I have two quarterth," Felicia Ann whispered. "The tooth fairy brought them."
    "I have two pennies, in my shoes!" Chelsea announced. "See?" She held one foot up and the children could see that she was wearing loafers with pennies wedged into their slots for decoration.

    Mrs. Pidgeon had taken her purse from the desk drawer. "I do, Barry!" she said. "I have a nickel!" She held it up.
    "What's on it?" Barry asked. "Look carefully."
    Mrs. Pidgeon examined her coin. "Let me see. On one side there's Thomas Jefferson. We all recognize him, don't we?" She pointed to the chart of United States presidents on the wall.
    The second-graders nodded and looked at the portrait of the third president.
    "He can't be Thomas Jefferson for his fable!" Malcolm shouted. "He can't be, can he? He can't! Because Thomas Jefferson's a guy and for a fable you have to be a—"
    "Wait a minute, Malcolm," Mrs. Pidgeon said. "Let me turn my nickel over. Maybe there's a ... No, it's a house. Here's Jefferson's beautiful big home on the other side. It was called Monticello."
    "Big house!" Ben shouted. "B for big house? That's not an animal!"
    Tyrone began to rap."
Good ole Barry, he be actin' like a fool, cuz he don' pay attention when she tellin' the rule...
"
    "Excuse me!" Barry said loudly, and Tyrone, with an apologetic smile, fell silent.
    "Could I see that, please, Mrs. Pidgeon?" Barry asked. She handed him her