Junie B., First Grader_ Shipwrecked - Barbara Park [4]
I rolled my eyes.
“Fact number one,” I said. “Columbus is not a mouse. And so I don't even care about being in this dumb play.”
After that, I turned around. And I clomped out of the kitchen kind of grumpy.
Tickle clomped with me.
We were almost to my room when my mother called after me.
“I just don't get it, Junie B.,” she hollered. “I thought you always wanted to be a star!”
I stopped clomping.
Tickle stopped clomping, too.
“A star?” I said. “Whoa. I never even thought about that situation.”
I quick turned around and zoomed back to the kitchen.
“A star?” I asked. “I could really be a star, do you think? Like the one and only star of the whole entire production, you mean?”
Mother grinned.
“Well … maybe not the one and only star,” she said. “But still, if you bring in the most facts about Columbus, you'll be able to choose any part you want.”
Just then, my legs jumped all around very excited.
“The star part, Mother!” I said. “I am going to choose the star part!”
I quick grabbed her hand.
“Let's go! Hurry! Hurry! We have to go to the library to get my facts straight!”
Mother undid my hand.
“Sorry, honey. But we can't go now,” she said. “Ollie's right in the middle of his nap. And I don't have a babysitter.”
I slumped my shoulders very glum.
“Darn it,” I said. “Darn it, darn it, darn it. That dumb old baby ruins everything.”
Mother wrinkled her eyebrows at me.
“Ollie's not dumb, Junie B.,” she said. “And besides, you and I can go to the library tomorrow. Tomorrow will be plenty of time for you to collect your facts.”
She stood there for a minute.
“Or,” she said, “if you want to do it right now … we can look up some Columbus facts on the computer. How does that sound?”
I grabbed her hand again and pulled her to her desk.
“Perfect!” I said real squealy. “That sounds perfect!”
And so me and Mother sat down at her desk. And she typed the name of Christopher Columbus on her computer.
And wowie wow wow!
A jillion pages came up about that guy! ’Cause he was famouser than I thought!
There were easy pages. And hard pages. And shortie pages. And longie pages. And picture pages. And poem pages. And there were even song pages!
Me and Mother read the pages out loud together. I read the easy pages. And she read the hard ones.
Then I wrote down lots of important facts we found out. And before I even knew it, I had eighteen whole facts printed on my paper!
I jumped down from my chair very thrilled.
“Eighteen! Eighteen! I have eighteen whole facts! And eighteen is more than my wildest dreams!” I said.
Then I hugged Mother real joyful.
And me and Tickle skipped to and fro.
And far and wide.
And round and round and round.
Just then, Mr. Scary finished taking attendance. And he said to please put our journals away.
“As you can see, we're missing three more classmates today,” he said kind of frustrated. “It's going to be hard to do a play with so many people absent. But we'll keep our fingers crossed that our classmates will be back in time to participate.”
Just then, we heard a rustly sound.
Sheldon was crossing his fingers inside his sandwich bags.
After he got done, he waved to Mr. Scary very pleasant.
Mr. Scary looked at him for a real long time. Then he waved back.
Finally, he stood up and walked to the board.
“Boys and girls, I thought it would be fun to base our play on the facts you gathered for homework,” he said.
He picked up the chalk. “If you have a fact you'd like to share, raise your hand and I'll write it on the board. Then—when we've listed all our facts—we can choose our play parts,” he said. “Now who would like to go first?”
José shot his hand in the air speedy fast.
“I would! I would! I have a poem!” he said.
Then he jumped right up, and he started to read.
In fourteen hundred ninety-two,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
He had three ships and left from Spain;
He sailed through sunshine,