The Chalk Box Kid

by Clyde Robert Bulla

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 1987 by Clyde Robert Bulla

  Cover art copyright © 2014 by Peter Ferguson

  Interior illustrations copyright © 1987 by Thomas B. Allen

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bulla, Clyde Robert.

  The chalk box kid / by Clyde Robert Bulla; illustrated by Thomas B. Allen.

  pages cm.

  “A Stepping Stone book.”

  Summary: Nine-year-old Gregory’s house does not have room for a garden, but he creates a surprising and very different garden in an unusual place.

  ISBN 978-0-394-89102-6 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-0-394-99102-3 (lib. bdg.) — [1. Artists—Fiction. 2. Imagination—Fiction. 3. Gardens—Fiction.]

  I. Allen, Thomas B., ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.B912Cas 1987 87-4683

  eBook ISBN 9781101939185

  This book has been officially leveled by using the F&P Text Level Gradient™ Leveling System.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  a

  To Stephanie Spinner

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. The Room

  2. Uncle Max

  3. The New School

  4. The Burned Building

  5. A Party

  6. Mr. Hiller

  7. Gregory’s Garden

  8. “Nothing At All”

  9. Ivy and Richard

  About the Author

  Excerpt from The Paint Brush Kid

  Gregory heard the clock strike. It was an hour till midnight. His birthday would soon be over.

  He went to the door and looked out into the street.

  “Shut the door,” said Aunt Grace.

  “I thought I heard the car,” he said.

  “Gregory,” said his aunt, “the cold air is coming in.”

  He shut the door. He went back and sat by her on the sofa. His tablet and paints and brushes were out on the table, but he didn’t feel like painting. He sat there and tried to watch television with Aunt Grace.

  It had been a long day. So far it was his very worst birthday.

  He had wanted to go with Mother and Daddy. They were moving to another house, and he hadn’t even seen it yet.

  “If you go with us, you’ll just get tired,” Mother had said. “I want you to stay with Aunt Grace.”

  He had thought she didn’t remember what day it was. He had told her, “I’m nine years old today.”

  “I know,” she had said, “and I’m sorry we can’t have a cake or a party. There’s just no time. We have to finish moving.”

  But he kept thinking there would be something for his birthday.

  He went to the door again. This time the car was there. Mother was getting out.

  She came up to the door. She had on old clothes, and she looked tired. “Hello, Grace,” she said. “Thank you for keeping Gregory. Are you ready, Gregory?”

  He picked up his tablet and paints and brushes, and he was ready.

  They went out to the car. She sat up front with Daddy. Gregory got into the back.

  They drove across the city. Gregory went to sleep.

  When he woke up, they had stopped under a streetlight. The light shone on a house.

  “Is this it?” he asked.

  “This is it,” said Daddy.

  Daddy had lost his job at the factory. Now he had a different job. That was why they had had to move.

  The house was small and it needed paint. It looked as if it had grown out of the sidewalk. There was no yard at all.

  They went inside. Gregory saw boxes and papers. He saw bare walls.

  “You’d better go to bed,” said Mother.

  “Where?” he asked.

  She showed him a room. His bed was in it. His chair and table were in it too.

  He asked, “Is it—is it mine?”

  “Do you like it?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes!” he said.

  “It used to be a porch,” she told him. “We had a wall put in, and the window.”

  So there was something for his birthday. There was something better than a cake or a party.

  “Go to bed now,” said Mother. She went out and left him there.

  He sat on the bed and looked at the room. It was not very wide, but it was long. It was a big room for such a little house. He looked at the floor and the walls and the ceiling. He looked into every corner. This was what he had always wanted—a room of his own.

  He heard a clock strike. His birthday was over, and it was the best birthday he had ever had!

  Gregory woke early. The day was coming in. He lay there and looked at the room that was all his.

  By the bed was the box he and Mother had packed. His things were in it.

  He got up and began to dig in the box. He found his old yellow robe and put it on.

  His tablet and paints and brushes were on the table where he had put them last night. Without making any noise, he went into the kitchen and brought back a cup of water. He sat down at his table and began to paint. The paper in his tablet was too small, but he painted a red house that wasn’t bad. He painted a sunflower that was a little better.

  Mother came to the door.

  He asked her, “Do we have any thumbtacks?”

  “What do you want with thumbtacks?” she asked.

  “I want to put my pictures up,” he said.

  She brought him some tacks.

  He put his pictures up on the wall. They looked good there, even if they were too small. Now the room looked like it was really his.

  He and Mother and Daddy had breakfast.

  “I’ll make more coffee for Max,” said Daddy.

  Gregory asked, “Is Uncle Max coming here?”

  “He is,” said Daddy.

  “Then I’m going out,” said Gregory.

  “Where?” asked Mother.

  “Up the street,” he said.

  “I don’t know—” said Mother.

  “Oh, let him go,” said Daddy. “He just wants to see the new neighborhood. Isn’t that right, Gregory? Don’t you want to see the new neighborhood?”

  “Yes,” said Gregory.

  He went out. The air was cold, but it felt good. It felt like spring.

  He walked up the street. It was Sunday morning, and not many people were out. He saw a grocery store. He saw a few places that looked like garages or small factories.

  The next block got better. There were more houses and trees. In the block after that, he came to a school. It was the Dover Street School. Mother had told him about it. He would be going there.

  He walked a few more blocks, and then he went home. His uncle Max was there.

  Uncle Max was twenty. He had a red beard, and he played the guitar and made up songs. Most of the time he was out of work.

  “Well!” he said in his loud voice. “Here comes the Great Gregory! Here comes the Pain
tbrush Kid!”

  “Hello,” said Gregory.

  He went to his room. The door was open. There was another bed in the room. There was a guitar on the bed.

  Mother called him into the kitchen. “Uncle Max will be with us for a while,” she said. “He isn’t working now. He needs a place to stay.”

  Gregory looked at her.

  “It won’t be so bad,” she said.

  “It’s not my room,” he said. “It’s his.”

  “It’s yours, too,” she said.

  But he knew how that would be.

  “Why don’t you like your uncle Max?” she asked.

  “He thinks he’s important,” said Gregory.

  “He is important,” said Mother. “We all are.”

  “He thinks no one is important but him,” said Gregory.

  He went outside. There was concrete all around the house. Even the wall across the back was concrete. There was a gate in the wall. It was painted green—an ugly green.

  He could hear Uncle Max playing the guitar, and he kicked the gate. He kicked it so hard that some of the paint fell off.

  In the morning Mother and Daddy got ready for work. She cooked in a restaurant. He was a guard in a bank.

  Mother asked Gregory, “Do you want your uncle to go with you to the new school?”

  Gregory shook his head.

  “Don’t you want someone to help you get started?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’ve done it before.”

  He went to school. He found the office. A woman there sent him to Room 3, and that was his room.

  His teacher was Miss Perry. She said to the class, “We have a new boy in our room. His name is Gregory.”

  She asked what school he had come from.

  “North Lake,” he said.

  “Is that here in the city?” she asked.

  “Yes. It’s a big school,” he told her. “It’s bigger than this.”

  He liked Miss Perry. He thought he was going to like Dover Street School. He began to learn the names of the boys and girls.

  At noon a boy named Vance came up to him on the playground. Vance was the biggest boy in Room 3.

  “Did you say you went to North Lake School?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Gregory.

  “What made you say it’s a big school?” asked Vance.

  Some other boys and girls had come by. They were listening.

  “It is a big school,” said Gregory.

  “No, it isn’t,” said Vance. “I’ve been there, and it’s not as big as this.”

  “It looks bigger,” said Gregory.

  “Well, it isn’t,” said Vance. “You like to brag, don’t you?”

  “I wasn’t bragging,” said Gregory. “I just said it was bigger. I didn’t say it was better.”

  He stopped. No one was listening. Vance and the others had gone away.

  After school he walked home alone. Uncle Max was there, watching television.

  Gregory went into the room that was his and his uncle’s. There were pictures on the walls that he had never seen before. They were big red and black posters of race cars. Gregory’s pictures were nowhere in sight.

  He went back to the front room. “Where are my pictures?” he asked.

  The television was turned up loud. Uncle Max turned it down. “What did you say?”

  “My pictures,” said Gregory. “Where are they?”

  “They’re still there,” said his uncle.

  “You put your posters over my pictures?” said Gregory.

  “Don’t you like my posters?” asked Uncle Max.

  “No, I don’t!” said Gregory.

  “That’s too bad,” said Uncle Max, and he turned the television up again.

  Gregory was angry. He wanted to go into the bedroom and tear down all his uncle’s posters.

  But that would only make things worse.

  He went out back and tried to find something to do. He shook the gate in the wall. There was a wire that held it shut.

  He began to work with the wire. He worked until it came loose. He opened the gate.

  On the other side was part of a building. The building had burned. One room was left. It had three walls and no roof, and there were bricks all over the floor. It looked as if no one had been there for a long time.

  Gregory went in. He walked through spider webs and dust.

  He piled up some bricks and sat down on them. He leaned back and looked at the sky. It was peaceful here, and he began to feel better. He was not quite so angry now.

  In Room 3 there was a girl named Ivy. She was small, with long black hair. She was shy. When she talked, it wasn’t much more than a whisper.

  There was something wonderful about her. Gregory wasn’t sure what it was, but it was there in her face and the way she held her head. It was in the pictures she made.

  Three times a week they had art class in Room 3.

  Once Gregory said to Ivy, “Your pictures are good.”

  She looked at a picture he had just made. It was a castle. He didn’t much like it. He had wanted to put a flag on top, but he had made the castle too big. There was no room for the flag.

  Ivy said nothing at all, but she touched the picture. He wasn’t sure whether she liked it or not.

  Since his first day, things hadn’t gone very well for him at the new school. He hoped they would get better, but after a week they were about the same. He thought Miss Perry liked him. He didn’t know about the others.

  Things weren’t going so well at home, either. Uncle Max was always there. He was always watching television. Or going plink, plink, plink on the guitar. Or sleeping in their room.

  It was more his room than Gregory’s, but now Gregory didn’t mind so much. He had a place of his own. Every day after school he went out to the burned building.

  “Can’t you find somewhere else to play?” asked Mother. “You’ll get all dirty out there.”

  “I’m cleaning it up,” he said.

  When he swept the floor, he found little pieces of something white. He showed one of them to Mother. “It looks like chalk,” he said.

  “It is chalk,” she said.

  A few days later she told him, “I found out about the burned building. The woman next door told me. It used to be a chalk factory. A man made chalk and tried to sell it to schools, but he didn’t do very well. The place caught fire and burned, and the man just went away and left it.”

  Gregory kept sweeping up more chalk. One day he found two wooden boxes under a pile of bricks. They were packed with sticks of chalk.

  The boxes were burned and broken. Some of the chalk was burned and broken, too, but some of it was clean and white.

  The walls of the burned building were black from the fire. He tried making chalk pictures on them. He made a ship and an alligator.

  Mother came to the gate and called him to dinner.

  “Do you want to see what I made?” he asked.

  “Some other time,” she said. “Your dinner is getting cold.”

  Gregory’s second week in the new school began with a party. It was for Ivy.

  Gregory asked the teacher, “Is this her birthday?”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” said Miss Perry. “You weren’t here last month, so you don’t know what happened.”

  There had been an art show, she told him. The whole school took part. There were more than five hundred pictures in the show.

  “And who do you think won the grand prize?” she asked.

  “Ivy!” he said.

  “Yes, Ivy,” said Miss Perry. “She won the blue ribbon. The art teacher and I wanted her to have a special prize. We got it yesterday, and we’re giving it to her today. That’s what the party is about.”

  The prize was on the teacher’s desk. It was a package wrapped in gold paper.

  The art teacher, Miss Cartright, came in. She made a speech about the art show. She called Ivy up to the front.

  “All the school is proud of you,�
� she said, and she gave Ivy the package.

  Ivy held it in her hands, and then she said a strange thing. “Maybe this isn’t for me.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Miss Cartright.

  “I mean,” Ivy said in her whispering voice, “there could be somebody better.”

  “We think you are the best,” said Miss Cartright.

  Ivy took the package to her seat.

  “Aren’t you going to see what it is?” asked Miss Perry.

  Slowly Ivy took off the gold paper. There was something inside that looked like a big book. But it wasn’t a book. It was a leather case.

  Ivy opened it. She sat very still.

  The other girls and boys were trying to see what was in the leather case.

  “Do you want to pass it around?” asked Miss Cartright.

  Ivy passed the case around. It came to Gregory. There were paints and brushes inside. There were pens and pencils. There was almost everything an artist could want, he thought.

  That evening he told Mother about the party.

  “That must have been fun,” she said. “Do you like school?”

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  “Have you made any friends?”

  “Well, no,” he said. “There is this Vance in my room. He doesn’t like me much. He has a lot of friends, and I don’t think they like me either.”

  “It takes a while to get used to a new school,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I don’t,” he said.

  But he did worry sometimes. He didn’t seem to belong in the new school. He wondered if he ever would.

  Mr. Hiller came to Room 3. He was a friend of Miss Perry’s.

  “Mr. Hiller works in a nursery,” she said. “Who knows what a nursery is?”

  One of the girls spoke up. “It’s a room for a baby.”

  “That is one kind,” said Miss Perry. “Mr. Hiller works in another kind. He works in a plant nursery. He sells plants and seeds, and he is here to tell us about them.”

  Mr. Hiller talked about gardens. As he talked he drew pictures on the blackboard. He drew a bunch of lettuce with curly leaves. He drew a round head of lettuce. “You can grow both kinds,” he said.