"Good," said Mrs. Pidgeon. "All right, class. Now we'll—"
"I don't get it!" Malcolm called out. "That story wasn't about floods or blizzards! It was insects! It was about insects! It was a story about insects! Ants! One time I was at my cousin's house and I sat on a whole hill of red ants, and—"
He was wiggling in his seat. Mrs. Pidgeon went to him and put her arm firmly across his shoulders. "Get a grip," she said. Sometimes she had to do that to calm Malcolm down. Sometimes Malcolm had to have a time-out. Malcolm had a hard time being calm at school, because at home his family had baby triplets and life was never calm. Their house, Malcolm said, was filled with the noise of babies crying, and their bathroom was filled with the smell of laundry, mostly in threes: three sets of baby clothes with spit-up on the front; and their kitchen was filled with groups of three bottles and three sippy cups and spilled milk and half-empty jars of strained peas, and sometimes Malcolm's mother announced, "I am going to scream three times!" and then she did, and after that she felt better for a while.
Now the class waited, as they were accustomed to doing, until Malcolm got a grip. Then they took out their social studies books and turned to page 32.
All but Gooney Bird Greene. Her social studies book was on her desk, but she hadn't opened it.
"Mrs. Pidgeon?" Gooney Bird raised her hand, and when the teacher nodded to her, she said, "I have a great idea!"
The second-graders, including Malcolm, all cheered. Whenever Gooney Bird had a great idea, something exciting was about to happen.
2.
At lunchtime, in the multipurpose room, all of Mrs. Pidgeon's second-graders sat together and traded lunch parts, as they always did.
"Anyone want some of my sushi?" asked Gooney Bird Greene. "This one is called kappa maki. It's mostly cucumber." She held up a small glistening cylinder.
"What's that green stuff?" Barry asked, making a face."
Nori,"Goony Bird told him.
"That's seaweed," Keiko explained.
"Yuck," Barry replied.
"You shouldn't have told him it was seaweed, Keiko," Gooney Bird said. "He might have thought it was spinach. Oh, well. I like it. I'll eat it myself." She popped the kappa maki into her mouth.
"Anyone want half a cream cheese and jelly on raisin bread?" Beanie asked. She held up a triangle of her sandwich.
"I'll take it, if the jelly isn't mooshing out," Chelsea said. "Let me see." She examined the sandwich half carefully. "Okay. I'll give you five carrot slices and an oatmeal cookie for it."
All around the table the second-graders made their trades. "YESSS!" Malcolm said suddenly. He was looking down at his lunch. "YESSS! YESSS!"
"Malcolm has all dessert!" Beanie pointed out. "How did you do that, Malcolm?"
He grinned happily at his pile of three cookies and three plastic cups of chocolate pudding. "Traded away two halves of an egg salad sandwich and an apple," he explained, talking with his mouth full. "I traded—"
Gooney Bird interrupted him before he could describe it three times. "Where's your lunch, Nicholas?" Gooney Bird asked. Nicholas often brought KFC chicken pieces, and sometimes he let her trade for one.
"I gave it away," Nicholas said. He looked gloomy.
"Why?"
"I'm not hungry."
"Are you sick?" Gooney Bird asked sympathetically. "We could take you to the nurse's office."
"No, I'm okay," Nicholas said. But he put his head down in his arms, on the table.
Around them, the other classes were also eating and talking. It was December. Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa decorations were on the walls. Mr. Leroy, the principal, had been wearing holiday neckties now for several days; today he was wearing one with small menorahs on it. Yesterday's had been reindeer. The kindergarten children had pasted photographs of themselves onto circles of construction paper and made a long chain of the dangling pictures that hung across the tops of the multipurpose room windows. The kitchen workers were all wearing Santa hats. And the school dog, a Saint Bernard named Bruno who belonged to Lester Furillo, the custodian, didn't seem to mind wearing plastic antlers. The whole school had a feeling of excitement because the holidays were coming.
"We need to make a sign," Beanie said, chewing on a carrot stick, "announcing the you-know-what."
Nicholas looked up briefly, then put his head back down.
"Yes! Our you-know-what!" Ben agreed. With a swat of his hand he flattened his empty milk carton.
"Our fabulous you-know-what!" added Chelsea as she wadded up her napkin and threw it, unsuccessfully, toward the trash can.
The fabulous you-know-what was Gooney Bird's idea.
"We can write our own fables!" Gooney Bird had explained.
"We already know how to write good stories—"
"Create interesting characters!" Ben announced.
"Describe them carefully so they seem real," Tricia added.
"Make them talk! That's called dialogue!" Barry called out.
"Put in a beginning, a middle, and an end," Tyrone said. Then he went into his rap routine."First you gotta start cuz you gotta have heart, and next you gotta middle cuz you feelin' like a fiddle, and when you gonna end everybody be yo' friend—" He stood at his desk and moved his body.
"Go, Tyroooonnne!" Malcolm called. "Go! Go!"
Mrs. Pidgeon, smiling, went to Tyrone and placed her arm firmly over his shoulders. "You're good, Tyrone. You're really good! But save it till recess. Class, quiet down, please."
When the room was silent, Felicia Ann looked up and spoke in her shy, whispery voice. "And alwayth put in a thuddenly," she reminded the class.
"Suddenly," Mrs. Pidgeon announced, "I think we have an interesting project, compliments of Gooney Bird Greene!"
"Yay!" the second-graders shouted, and Gooney Bird, holding her long maybe-a-nightgown out to the sides, curtsied politely.
With the teacher's help, the class decided that the fable project would become, also, a holiday celebration for the school. They had time, they thought. There were still two weeks before vacation.
Each child would write a fable, an animal story, using an animal that matched his or her own initial.