"But what about a—" Then Mrs. Pidgeon hesitated for a long time, thinking, with a puzzled look on her face. "Oh, dear," she said at last. "It is a problem. Gooney Bird, what do you think? Can you come up with one?"
Gooney Bird, who felt that taking deep breaths was always helpful in problem-solving, took several deep breaths. She closed her eyes tightly, something she often did while 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 coin.
"Well," he said, after he had examined it, "there are different kinds of nickels, I guess. And mine has a picture of a—"
He went to the board, picked up the chalk, and added his animal to the long list.
BUFFALO, Barry wrote neatly.
"Here is my fable," Barry announced. He opened his paper and read from it, holding his nickel up to the class with his other hand.
The American Buffalo
The correct scientific name for the American Buffalo is actually bison. The National Bison Association would like us to use the correct name for this magnificent beast.
Once there had been about 60 million bison in the American West from Canada to Mexico. But by 1893, there were only a little more than three hundred left.
Bison were the center of life for the Native Americans. They provided food, shelter, and clothing. But gradually—
"This isn't a story!" Malcolm called out. "Barry is supposed to be telling a story! It isn't a story about a buffalo!"
"It doesn't have a suddenly," Ben added. "It has & gradually instead!"
"It is too a story!" Barry replied angrily. "I learned all about it in the encyclopedia!"
Mrs. Pidgeon went to the front of the room, holding up her "Quiet, please" hand toward the class.
"Barry," she said, "you provided us with a real learning experience. I never knew there was a nickel with a buffalo—excuse me, bison—on it. And your report is very interesting. One of these days we will have a lesson about doing reports, and we will each have a chance to present one.