Mr macky is wacky, p.3
Mr. Macky Is Wacky!,
p.3
“Two very special guests are visiting our school today,” he said. “Dr. Carbles, the president of the Board of Education, will be here any minute. He is eager to hear some of your Presidents’ Day oral reports. And I would like to welcome the new president of Ella Mentry School…Mr. Wiggles, the ferret that belongs to Neil Crouch in Miss Daisy’s class!”
Everybody started cheering. Neil the nude kid took a bow. This song called “Hail to the Chief” came out of the loudspeaker. When it was over, Mr. Klutz and Mrs. Patty were still talking. I guess they forgot to turn off the microphone in the office.
“Uh, where’s the ferret?” Mr. Klutz asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you had it.”
“I put the cage on your desk.”
“I put it on the floor over there.”
“The cage is empty!” shouted Mrs. Patty. “The ferret must have escaped!”
“Oh no!”
“Mr. Wiggles!” screamed Neil the nude kid.
He totally freaked and went running out of the class. Meanwhile, Mr. Klutz and Mrs. Patty were still talking over the loudspeaker.
“We have to find the ferret!” shouted Mr. Klutz.
“It must be around here somewhere!”
“How far could a ferret get?”
“It could be anywhere!”
“We’ll have to search the school!”
“Lock the outside doors!” shouted Mr. Klutz. “Don’t tell the students that the ferret is missing! They might freak out!”
But it was too late. By now everybody knew that President Wiggles was missing, and everybody was freaking out. Miss Daisy told us to stay in our seats, but there was no way I was going to stay in my seat with a ferret running around loose. Those things look like long rats! It could be in my desk for all I knew.
We all went running into the hallway, and guess who we saw there?
I’m not going to tell you.
Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. It was Dr. Carbles, the president of the Board of Education!
“What’s going on here?” asked Dr. Carbles. Unlike Dr. Seuss, he’s a real doctor, but he isn’t very cool.
We couldn’t tell him what was going on, because the whole school was going crazy. Kids dressed up like presidents were spilling out of classrooms and running all over the hall, shouting and smashing into one another.
“Help!” somebody screamed. “There’s a wild ferret on the loose!”
“Run for your lives!”
“Find the ferret!”
Mr. Macky was shouting at us, trying to control the situation.
“Everyone back to your classes!” he yelled. “Please remain calm!”
Calm? Was he nuts? There was a ferret running around the school!
Somebody knocked over Dr. Carbles. The teachers were yelling for us to go back to class. If President Wiggles was smart, he would have found a good hiding place where he wouldn’t get trampled by some kid.
Meanwhile, me and Ryan and Michael were sneaking around like Secret Service agents on the hunt for President Wiggles.
It was cool. You should have been there.
11
President Wiggles, Reporting for Doody
Well, we searched all over the school, but we just couldn’t find President Wiggles. When we finally returned to our class, everybody was looking around the room. President Wiggles could be anywhere. Poor Neil the nude kid was really upset. If his ferret was lost, his parents were going to be mad.
Miss Daisy said President Wiggles was sure to turn up and we had to get back to work. It was time for us to give our oral reports. Little Miss Perfect Andrea got to go first. She was dressed up like John F. Kennedy.
“‘Ask not what your country can do for you,’” Andrea said. “‘Ask what you can do for your country.’”
I had to admit that Andrea’s oral report was pretty good. She told us that John F. Kennedy was a war hero and that he started the space program and the Peace Corps. He was cool.
“Exemplary!” Miss Daisy said as Andrea walked back to her seat. (That means “excellent” in grown-up talk.)
“Wait until you hear my oral report,” I whispered to Ryan. “I’m gonna blow Andrea’s doors off.”
Next it was crybaby Emily’s turn. She was dressed up like Abraham Lincoln with a suit, tie, big black hat, and fake beard.
Emily’s report was really sad. She told us that Abraham Lincoln was dirt poor as a kid, his three-year-old son died, his wife went crazy, and the country was at war with itself the whole time he was president. And then, to top it all off, a few days after the war ended, some guy shot him.
Emily started coughing and rubbing her eyes like she was going to cry. For once I couldn’t call her a crybaby. The story of Abraham Lincoln was really sad. Andrea was crying. Miss Daisy was crying. Then Michael and Ryan started crying, too. Everybody was crying. Even me!
While we were all crying, the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened. The big Lincoln hat on Emily’s head started moving around. It was like it had a motor in it or something. And then the front of the hat lifted up a little. And you know what was under there?
I’m not going to tell you.
Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.
It was President Wiggles! He was sitting on top of Emily’s head!
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!” Emily screamed. “THERE’S A RAT IN MY HAT!* I THINK IT JUST POOPED IN MY HAIR!”
Emily totally freaked and ran out of the room. President Wiggles jumped off her head and ran away. Neil the nude kid chased him around the class.
It was hilarious. A real Kodak moment. And we got to see it live and in person!
12
My Turn at Last
Just when it was my turn to give my oral report, Mr. Macky came into our class. Good, I thought. I wanted him to see me blow the doors off Andrea.
I took my report and went to the front of the room with my cane and glasses and fur hat.
“My name is Benjamin Franklin,” I read from my report. “I’m on the hundred-dollar bill, and I lived a very interesting life.”
I told the class all the cool stuff I learned about Benjamin Franklin. Like how he ran away from home when he was a teenager. And how he became a famous printer and writer. And how he became a famous inventor and discovered that lightning was electricity. And how he helped to write the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And how he turned three hundred years old in 2006.
Everybody was totally silent while I read my awesome oral report, so I knew it must have been really good. I was blowing Andrea’s doors off! Nah-nah-nah boo-boo on her!
Finally I came to the last line of my report. I looked up. Everybody was staring at me. They had weird looks on their faces.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Andrea was the only one who said anything.
“Benjamin Franklin wasn’t even a president, dumbhead.”
“Huh?” I said.
I looked at Mr. Macky. I was sure he was going to tell little Miss Smarty Pants that she was wrong and that she should keep her big mouth shut. She doesn’t know everything.
But he didn’t.
“A.J.,” Mr. Macky said, “Benjamin Franklin was a great man, but he was never president of the United States.”
He wasn’t? I read a lot of stuff about Benjamin Franklin. It never said he wasn’t president. I just figured he had to be a president. Why would they put him on a hundred-dollar bill if he wasn’t even a president?
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I had to think fast.
So I said the only thing I could say.
“I knew that!”
Then I did the only thing I could do.
I ran out of the room. And I’m never going back.
I’m going to Antarctica to live with the penguins. Penguins are cool. And it won’t matter to them that I did my Presidents’ Day oral report on a guy who wasn’t even a president.
Maybe Neil the nude kid will catch President Wiggles. Maybe Mr. Macky will become a full-time big-screen TV salesman. Maybe Abraham Lincoln will beat up George Washington. Maybe Mr. Klutz will grow some hair on his head so I can write a Dr. Seuss poem about it. Maybe I’ll come back in time for Presidents’ Day next year, when everybody will have forgotten my dumb report. Or maybe I can find a way to get Benjamin Franklin elected president of the United States even though he’s been dead since 1790.
But it won’t be easy!
About the Author and the Illustrator
DAN GUTMAN has written many weird books for kids. He lives in New Jersey (a very weird place) with his weird wife and two weird children. You can visit him on his weird website at www.dangutman.com
JIM PAILLOT lives in Arizona (another weird place) with his weird wife and two weird children. Isn’t that weird? You can visit him on his weird website at www.jimpaillot.com
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Credits
Cover art © 2007 by Jim Paillot
Copyright
MY WEIRD SCHOOL #15: MR. MACKY IS WACKY!. Text copyright © 2007 by Dan Gutman. Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Jim Paillot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition NOVEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061973352
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*
Oral means “mouth,” so an oral report comes out of your mouth. Only gifted and talented kids know hard words like that.
*
Isn’t that the name of a Dr. Seuss book? I think Miss Daisy read us that book. It was cool.
Dan Gutman, Mr. Macky Is Wacky!
