I, AMBER BROWN, AM DEFINITELY ONE VERY UNHAPPY HUMAN BEING.
To prove that I’m not upset, I repeat Hannah’s question. “Any other kids there?”
Justin nods. “Lots. Next door, the family has five kids, two old enough to babysit for Danny, one my age, Jon—they call him Junior—and one Danny’s age, Jim Bob.”
“Twins?” Tiffany Shroeder asks.
“No.” Justin explains. “A lot of people there have two first names.”
Great, I think. Next thing, we’re going to have to start calling him “Justin Bob.”
Justin keeps blabbing on.
I keep waiting for him to mention the very important thing that his new school and neighborhood doesn’t have—ME.
But he never does.
Read all the Amber Brown books!
Amber Brown Goes Fourth
Amber Brown Is Feeling Blue
Amber Brown Is Green with Envy
Amber Brown Is Not a Crayon
Amber Brown Is Tickled Pink
Amber Brown Sees Red
Amber Brown Wants Extra Credit
Forever Amber Brown
I, Amber Brown
You Can’t Eat Your Chicken Pox, Amber Brown
Paula Danziger
AMBER BROWN
IS NOT A CRAYON
Illustrated by Tony Ross
PUFFIN BOOKS
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
To Carrie Marie Danziger:
niece, consultant and pal.
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 1994
Published by Puffin Books, a member of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006
Copyright © Paula Danziger, 1994
Illustrations copyright © Tony Ross, 1994
All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Danziger, Paula, 1944–2004
Amber Brown is not a crayon / Paula Danziger
p. cm.
Summary: The year she is in third grade is a sad time for Amber because
her best friend Justin is getting ready to move to a distant state.
ISBN: 978-1-101-66059-1
[1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Moving, Houshold—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction] I. Title.
PZ7.D2394Am 1994
[Fic]—dc20 92-34678 CIP AC
Lettering by David Gatti.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
YOU CAN’T EAT YOUR CHICKEN POX, AMBER BROWN
Chapter
One
In just ten minutes, our entire class is getting on a plane for our flight to China.
I, Amber Brown, am one very excited third grader.
My best friend, Justin Daniels, is going to sit next to me.
Right now, he’s sitting at the desk next to me, pretending to be an alarm clock.
All I hear now is a quiet tick tock, tick tock, but I’m absolutely positively sure that he has something else planned.
We always sit together when our class flies to some faraway place.
In fact, we’ve been sitting together since we first met in preschool, but that’s another story.
Finding my passport and tickets is not easy because I, Amber Brown, am one very messy third grader.
I quickly pull things out of my desk—the book I’m going to use for my report, half a roll of strawberry licorice, my sticker book, two headbands, seven rubber bands, eleven paper clips, two workbooks, and finally, my passport and tickets, which I have put in a specially decorated case. (I used a lot of my stickers on it.)
“Bzzzzzz. Squawk.” Justin starts rocking back and forth.
I hit him on the head with my passport and tickets. “Okay. What are you doing this time?”
“I’m a cuckoo bird alarm clock and my tail feathers are caught.” Justin bobs back and forth.
Having Justin Daniels as my best friend sure makes life more fun.
So does having Mr. Cohen as my teacher.
“Get ready to board.” Mr. Cohen flicks the lights off and on to signal the end of one activity and the beginning of another.
All of the chairs in the classroom are lined up so that it looks like a real plane, with aisles to walk down and places for the pilot, co-pilot and flight attendants.
Mr. Cohen is always the pilot. He says that’s because he’s the only one in the room with a driver’s license but I know the real reason he’s always the pilot. It’s because he wants to make sure that we get to where we’re supposed to go. Once he let Roger Hart be the pilot, but when we got there, Roger announced that he had taken us to Disneyland instead of Zaire.
So now, Mr. Cohen is the pilot all the time and he picks different kids to be co-pilots and flight attendants. When my turn comes, I want to be co-pilot. I don’t want to have to pass out the little packets of peanuts, because some of the boys act so immature, making monkey sounds and stuff.
Not Justin though. He and I spend the time reading the ROOM 3-B IN FLIGHT magazine. (Everyone writes articles for it.) We also do the crossword puzzle that Mr. Cohen makes up.
Well, actually, to be honest, sometimes Justin makes monkey sounds, too.
The class lines up, waiting for our passports to be checked by Mr. Cohen.
Hannah Burton looks at the photo on her passport. “I hate this picture of me. I don’t know why we couldn’t just bring one from home.”
Every time we start studying a new country, we “fly” there, and every time we do, Hannah complains about the picture on her passport.
“You look perfectly good,” I tell her, looking at her school picture.
We all use our school pictures, except for Brandi Colwin who came to school after the pictures were taken. Her passport has a picture that Mr. Cohen took with his instant camera.
Hannah shakes her head. “I am perfectly good. I just look really terrible in my picture.”
I choose to ignore Hannah’s correction. “You know that Mr. Cohen wants our make-believe passports to look like the real thing. Remember
when he showed us his real passport. It looked awful, and he doesn’t really look that bad.”
Hannah makes a face and grins. “Amber, just because you forgot which day the pictures were going to be taken and your picture looks like you jumped out of bed, threw on any old clothes and combed your hair with a rake, doesn’t mean that the rest of us don’t care about how we look in our photos.”
I look at Hannah’s picture. Her long blond hair is perfectly combed, with a really pretty multicolored ribbon barrette.
I look at my picture.
Brown eyes, freckled nose. . . . My brown, slightly messy hair is held back with two bagel-shaped barrettes.
I’m wearing normal, nonpicture-taking-day clothes. In fact, I’m wearing my favorite things . . . a very long T-shirt that my aunt Pamela brought back from a trip to London and a pair of black stirrup pants. (Even though it doesn’t show, I remember which pants I was wearing. I, Amber Brown, have a very good memory.)
I don’t look so bad, and anyway, I forgot that the pictures were being taken that day, even though Mr. Cohen told us a million times, even though he had written two million reminders on the blackboard.
So I’m a little forgetful.
And Hannah Burton isn’t always totally right. I don’t comb my hair with a rake. Maybe my fingers sometimes but never a rake.
“I like your picture.” Justin grins at me. “It looks exactly like you, not just the way you look but the way you act.”
“You mean messy.” Hannah laughs.
I want to pull off the stupid little bow that she’s wearing on her head.
“Don’t you dare.” Justin pulls on my arm.
I like the way that Justin usually knows what I’m thinking and I usually know what he’s thinking.
Mr. Cohen checks our passports, looks at our boarding tickets, and then Joey Fortunato leads us to our seats.
Once everyone is seated, Joey shows us how to fasten our seatbelts and tells us what to do in case of an emergency.
Mr. Cohen gets on his make-believe microphone and tells us to get ready for the trip of a lifetime.
And off we go—into the wild blue yonder.
The third grade is on its way to China.
Chapter
Two
China.
It’s a nice place to visit.
Once we got off the plane, Mr. Cohen showed us a film about China and then we worked on our scrapbooks about the trip.
Justin and I are cutting out pictures from the folders that the travel agency sent.
We’re turning them into postcards, to make it seem like we’re really in China. Then we’re writing important facts about the places in the scrapbook.
Justin holds up a picture of a giant panda and says, “Let’s send this to Danny the Bratster.”
“You mean, Danny the Bratster, your little brother, the four-year-old you hate sharing your room with.” I paste the picture on a notecard.
“The same. The one and only.” Justin nods, takes the card and writes:
“That’s B-A-R-E-L-Y,” I inform him.
Justin makes a face. “With the panda, B-E-A-R-L-Y is better. Don’t worry. Danny can’t read anyway.”
“Not your handwriting, at least.” I stare at the scribble.
Justin looks down at the card. “I’ll do the pasting. You do the cursive.”
Looking at the gobs of paste, I think “messy.” If neatness counts, with me the count hardly gets to one.
Justin, on the other hand, is very neat about pasting things.
My handwriting is much better.
Another example of what a great team we are. We help each other out. We also learn things at about the same time, and when one of us learns first, he or she helps the other one out. When I learned to make the “e” go forward, not “a,” I taught Justin. He helps me with fractions, which I only half understand. We both whisper words to each other in reading group when we need help—a great team.
Justin keeps pasting.
I keep writing.
We “send” one postcard to Justin’s father, who got a new job and has to live alone in Alabama. Justin, Danny and his mother are staying here, in New Jersey, until their house gets sold.
That’s taking a long time.
Secretly, I’m glad.
Sometimes Justin gets a little sad.
I’m not glad about that.
I know how Justin feels about missing his father. When my parents got a divorce, my dad moved far away, to another country, so I never get to see him and he hardly ever calls. Justin’s lucky though. His father comes home some weekends, and he gets to talk to him a lot on the phone.
And even though Justin misses his dad, I keep my fingers crossed a lot of the time hoping that no one buys their house and that Mr. Daniels gets a job here and moves back again.
At the other end of the table, Jimmy Russell and Bobby Clifford are fighting.
“Listen, tuna head, I need the brown crayon.” Jimmy tugs at Bobby’s sleeve. “I’ve asked you for it forty-seven times.”
“And forty-seven times, I’ve told you that I still need it, rat rear.” Bobby keeps using the crayon. “Why don’t you just use another color?”
“Because I need brown.” Jimmy throws down a blue crayon.
Jimmy and Bobby have been fighting since preschool.
Mr. Cohen has told them to “grow out of it,” but they haven’t.
“Brown. I need brown,” Jimmy repeats.
Bobby crosses his eyes, sticks out his tongue and clutches the brown crayon to his chest.
“Doofus.” Jimmy wiggles his ears.
“If you need a brown crayon,” Bobby points to me, “why don’t you use the top of her head. She’s amber brown.”
I stare at Bobby. “Amber Brown is not a crayon. Amber Brown is a person.”
The two boys laugh.
I, Amber Brown, am so sick of people teasing me about my name. When I was younger, I used to wish that my parents had given me a normal name like Jennifer or Tiffany or Chelsea.
Now, though, I really like my name.
But I still have to put up with goofballs teasing me about it.
Mr. Cohen flicks the lights off and on. “Lunchtime in China. Clear the desks.”
Everyone quickly cleans up.
I see Bobby put the brown crayon in his pocket for later.
In walk Ms. Armitage, Mr. Burton and Mrs. Hopkins.
The classroom parents committee brings in Chinese takeout food and we start eating “in” China, not “on” china because we’re using paper plates.
I, Amber Brown, am not very good with chopsticks. I use mine to spear the food and then use a fork for the rice.
After we finish eating, Justin and I fence with our chopsticks.
Then Mr. Cohen passes out the fortune cookies.
Opening mine up, I read:
Experience is the Best Teacher.
I hold the paper up and show it to Mr. Cohen. “I thought YOU were the best teacher. Who is Mr. Experience?”
Mr. Cohen grins and then heads off to settle a fight between Jimmy and Bobby.
Justin has put his fortune down on the desk in front of him.
He stares at the blackboard.
I pick it up.
It says:
Soon you will be going on a new
journey and beginning a new life.
I put the fortune down.
Suddenly, I don’t feel very good.
Suddenly, pieces of dry fortune cookie feel like they are choking me.
I, Amber Brown, hope that the fortune cookies are wrong.
Chapter
Three
“Snack time.” Justin puts the package of Oreos on his kitchen table.
“Yum.” I rip the package open, take out a cookie, eat the cream center out of the middle and hand the cookie parts to Justin.
“Yum.” He eats them.
I take a second cookie and eat the center out of it.
Justin and I have been ea
ting cookies like this since preschool.
We call it teamwork.
Hannah Burton calls it “gross.”
Mrs. Daniels walks into the kitchen.
Danny follows. “Play Legos with me.”
“Leg. Legos. What’s the difference?” Justin walks over to his brother and pulls at his leg.
I wish I had a little brother or sister to tease. Being an only child means I don’t, but it’s okay, I guess, because I can always tease Danny.
Mrs. Daniels tells Danny, “You can play with your toys later. Right now I don’t want you to make a mess because the real estate broker is bringing people over to look at the house.”
Suddenly, teasing Danny doesn’t seem so important. Suddenly, it’s much more important to cross my fingers and wish very hard—very, very hard. I wish that the people hate the house, that they think it’s too big or too small, that they don’t have the money to buy it.
The doorbell rings.
“Would you two play with Danny?” Mrs. Daniels asks and then leaves to answer the door.
“Cookie.” Danny imitates the sound of the Cookie Monster on Sesame Street.
“Sure, Walter.” I hand him a cookie.
Walter is Danny’s real name but when he was little he had trouble saying it and kept calling himself “Danny Danny.”
The name stuck and now everyone calls him Danny, except for Justin and me when we want to torment him.
Danny starts to sing a song. “Amber Brown is a crayon . . . a crayon . . . a crayon . . . a broken old crayon.”
Something tells me that I never should have let him know how I hate the way that some kids tease me about my name.
I guess that it’s probably not such a good idea to tease someone about a name when they can tease back.
We all eat a few more cookies and then take a plastic bowl and start throwing cookies into it.
“Two points. Yes!” I yell, as my cookie rims the bowl and falls in.
“Good shot,” a strange voice says.
Looking up, I see a very pregnant lady who applauds my athletic ability.
Amber Brown Is Not a Crayon Page 1