by Jamie Gilson
“I never thought you were. Look, Sam, you told me to stop telling everybody about being so smart. And I am. Trying to stop, I mean. I think you better just stop talking about being dumb.”
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “But reading and writing like I do seems dumb to me.” We started walking and it didn’t seem so crazy to be talking to Alicia. She seemed like my friend. I turned to her and said, “Ms. Huggins told me about all these famous guys, like Edison and President Wilson and all, who had learning disabilities like I do when they were kids. They all had a hard time in school, but look what they did. At least that’s what she said.”
“If they can do it, why not Sam Mott?” Alicia asked. “Why not?”
“Why not? I mean, maybe I’ll be a ditch digger or something I don’t need to read a lot for. Maybe, though,” I told her, “I’ll dig up gold and silver statues and skeletons and broken pots and Viking helmets and swords and garbage pits and all. And then I’ll tell people what it all means. Is that crazy?”
“No crazier than me saying I’m going to be a psychiatrist,” she said. “Somehow I don’t think understanding people is what I do best. Maybe I should just discover an alternate energy source.”
“I think,” I told her, “I’ll do my science report on archeology. Will you read some stuff with me?”
“Why not?” she said.
As soon as I got home I called Mrs. Glass to ask her if I could borrow the things we’d dug up from the tree roots to use for my school report and to tell her I’d taken the tests.
She laughed. No, she hooted. “Sam, I knew you’d do it. I really knew. I hated myself for threatening you, but if that had anything to do with your finally taking them, I’m glad I did it.” Then she paused. “As for the great tree treasure, I don’t have it anymore.”
“Don’t have it?” She’d dumped it. I knew it. It was all dirty so she’d just tossed it in the garbage. “Did you really throw it away?” I asked her. “All that stuff? All of it?”
“Oh, not all of it,” she said. “Come on, Sam, now who’s calling who dumb?” And she kind of giggled. “I took it over to the Historical Society on Saturday. They’re going to devote one whole display case to our tornado wonders. But you can borrow what you want for your report.
“Look, Chuckie and Alex and I will take you over right now. It’s a pretty impressive place. They let me write the labels for our display,” she said. “And there’s one I especially want you to see. You know what I wrote on the label for the tapping gouge?”
“Uh, ‘This is a tapping gouge’?” I guessed.
“Come on. I wrote—tell me what you think of it—‘Found in the roots of a sugar maple tree by archeologist Sam Mott, age twelve.’”
I dug in my pocket and got out the word Ms. Huggins had written. “Arc-he-ol-o-gy.” I could still read it. Over the telephone I could hear Rooster barking.
“Chuckie,” Mrs. Glass called away from the phone, “you and Alex get your jackets. We’re going to pick up Sam.”
I felt like somebody had poured a gallon of pop over me, not the wet, just the bubbles. Archeologist, Sam Mott, age twelve.
“I can read that,” I said.
Afterword
Q: Okay, what’s the answer? Do bananas chew gum?
A: Come on! Bananas don’t even have teeth.
The book is about Sam Mott, who has a hard time reading and writing. I knew some kids who had this problem. All of them had to take tests to find out what was up. On one of those tests, the first question was read aloud to them: “Do bananas answer the telephone?” It’s meant to find out if the kid understands what he hears. The answer’s pretty easy: No.
In the book Sam has to take a lot of tests too. I decided to change the first question of his test to “Do bananas chew gum?” He gets it right. But on other questions he has a lot more trouble.
The book has been translated into two other languages. In German it’s titled Essen Bananen Gern Kuchen? Which translates to “Do bananas like to eat cake?” In Dutch the book is titled Ik Heet Gewoon Tom, which means “They just call me Tom.” I guess this title would be okay, except that when I wrote it, nobody in the book was named Tom. The translator changed the names of all of the characters. Sam became Tom.
I’ve gotten letters from readers who say that they’d write a different ending. They’d cast a magic spell so Sam could read as well as they can. Ah, but this is reality. Magic spells don’t work here.
Certainly, though, all is not lost. At the end of the book Sam is able to say, “I felt like somebody had poured a gallon of pop over me, not the wet, just the bubbles.” He’s pretty happy.
If you’d like to learn more about me and my twenty books, all you need to do is go to my website at www.jamiegilson.com. To ask me questions about them, send an email to [email protected].
About the Author
“‘I know why you write about us,’ a sixth-grade boy once told me. ‘It’s because we’re middle-aged and things are happening to us.’ And it’s true. My characters are all in the process of growing up, of being astonished by the strange way their world works.
“You can see yourself and your weaknesses in someone else as easily when you are laughing at his muddle as when you are weeping at his despair. That’s what I try to do—make my readers laugh and understand at the same time.
“Before writing I always do research. I’ve talked to boys about collecting beer cans, to refugees about what it was like coming to America, to teachers of children with learning disabilities. I once went with a class to outdoor education camp. I’ve asked kids what it was like to be in programs for the gifted and talented. It is this close observation that I hope makes my books seem real.”
Born in Beardstown, Illinois, Jamie Gilson spent her early years in several small midwestern towns where her father worked as a flour miller. After graduating from Northwestern University, she married Jerome Gilson, then a law student and now a trademark lawyer. In addition to writing, Mrs. Gilson has worked as a junior high school speech and English teacher; a staff writer and producer for the Division of Radio and Television of the Chicago Public Schools; and as continuity director for radio station WFMT. The Gilsons have three grown children, Tom, Matthew, and Anne, and live in a suburb of Chicago.
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Also by Jamie Gilson
CAN’T CATCH ME, I’M THE GINGERBREAD MAN
DIAL LEROI RUPERT, DJ
DOUBLE DOG DARE
4B GOES WILD
HARVEY, THE BEER CAN KING
HELLO, MY NAME IS SCRAMBLED EGGS
HOBIE HANSON, GREATEST HERO OF THE MALL
HOBIE HANSON, YOU’RE WEIRD
SOCCER CIRCUS
STICKS AND STONES AND SKELETON BONES
THIRTEEN WAYS TO SINK A SUB
WAGON TRAIN 911
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by Jamie Gilson
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 © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 978-0-062-12668-9
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books edition of Do Bananas Chew Gum? as follows:
Gilson, Jamie.
Do bananas chew gum?
SUMMARY: Able to read and write at only a second-grade level, sixth-grader Sam Mott considers himself dumb until he is prompted to cooperate with those who think something can be done about his problem.
ISBN 0-688-41960-7 ISBN 0-688-51960-1 lib. bdg.
&nbs
p; [1. Reading disability—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G4385Do [Fic] 80-11414
FIRST BEECH TREE EDITION, 1997
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