Twister on Tuesday - Mary Pope Osborne [8]
“Jack? Ready to go?” Annie asked.
In that moment, Jack actually hated to leave. But he nodded slowly and said, “Let’s go.”
He and Annie took off through the bright, sparkling grass. They ran to the small grove of trees near the creek.
They climbed up the rope ladder and scrambled into the tree house.
Annie picked up their Pennsylvania book.
“I wish we could go there,” she said.
This time the wind did not start to blow.
The tree house simply started to spin on its own.
It spun faster and faster.
Then everything was still.
Absolutely still.
Jack opened his eyes.
Morning light filled the tree house.
He and Annie were wearing their own clothes again.
“Home,” said Annie, smiling.
Jack looked out the window.
He saw their nice, cozy house in the distance, their lawn, their sidewalk, their paved street.
“Life here is pretty easy compared to pioneer life,” said Jack.
“We’re lucky,” said Annie.
Jack reached into his bag and pulled out the small slate.
“Our third writing,” he said. He added the poem to the list from the Civil War and the letter from the Revolutionary War.
“You did just what that poem says you should do,” said Annie.
“What do you mean?” Jack asked.
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” Annie said. “You kept trying to make friends with Jeb. In the end, you did.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Jack.
“We have to get only one more special writing for Morgan’s library,” said Annie.
“I wonder how that will help save Camelot?” said Jack.
Annie shrugged.
“It’s a mystery,” she said.
She and Jack looked around the tree house.
“Look—” Annie picked up a piece of paper lying in the corner. She read aloud:
Come back early Wednesday morning.
“Wednesday? Man, that’s tomorrow!” said Jack.
“So?” said Annie. She started down the rope ladder.
“Not much time to recover,” said Jack, pulling on his backpack.
“Recover from what?” Annie said.
“The twister,” said Jack.
“Oh yeah, I’d almost forgotten about that,” said Annie.
Jack smiled.
Actually, the nightmare of the twister was fading from his memory, too.
We must try to hold on to the good memories, Miss Neely had said, and let go of the bad ones.
The kindness of Will and Kate, making friends with Jeb, the courage of Miss Neely—these memories, Jack thought, he would never forget.
MORE FACTS ABOUT TWISTERS
• Twisters, or tornados, are the fastest winds on earth.
• Twisters can travel at speeds up to 200 miles per hour.
• The spinning winds act like a giant vacuum cleaner as they move across the earth.
• Almost 1,000 tornados hit the United States each year.
MORE FACTS ABOUT
PIONEER LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE
From the mid-1800s through the 1880s, thousands of pioneers traveled by wagon across America. Most were headed for the territories of Oregon and California. But a number stopped and settled on the Kansas frontier. They made dugouts and broke up the hard ground to plant crops. These pioneers faced windstorms and dust storms, a shortage of water, and grasshopper plagues. In spite of the hardships, they set up small schools so their children could learn the three R’s: “reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic.” Children of varied ages often learned together. It was not unusual for teachers to be as young as 15 or 16 years old.
MORE FACTS ABOUT
PIONEER SCHOOLBOOKS
The most popular American schoolbooks of the 1880s were called McGuffey Readers. They were put together by a schoolteacher from Ohio named William Holmes McGuffey. Poems such as “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and “If at First You Don’t Succeed” became part of American life because they were in the McGuffey Readers.
Webster’s Spelling Book was another sig-nificant reference in early American schools. It taught people who’d come here from all over the world how to spell words in the English language.
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Excerpt copyright © 2001 by Mary Pope Osborne
Published by Random House Children's Books,
a division of Random