by Barbara Park
Anyway, I never thought I’d say this, but making posters turned out to be one of the easiest parts of running for office. The hardest part was how I had to go around being nice to people all the time. And how I had to always keep smiling. I’m not kidding. I even had to smile at kids who make me sick.
Maxie said it’s called “sucking up.” He said it’s the American way.
Kids Love Barbara Park’s books so much, they’ve given them all these awards:
Alabama’s Emphasis on Reading
Arizona Young Readers’ Award
Charlotte Award (New York State)
Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award (Vermont)
Flicker Tale Children’s Book Award (North Dakota)
Georgia Children’s Book Award
Golden Archer Award (Wisconsin)
Great Stone Face Award (New Hampshire)
Iowa Children’s Choice Award
IRA-CBC Children’s Choice
IRA Young Adults’ Choice
Junior Book Award (South Carolina)
Library of Congress Book of the Year
Maud Hart Lovelace Award (Minnesota)
Milner Award (Georgia)
Nevada Young Readers’ Award
North Dakota Children’s Choice Award
Nutmeg Children’s Book Award (Connecticut)
OMAR Award (Indiana)
Parents’ Choice Award
Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award (Illinois)
Rhode Island Children’s Book Award
Sasquatch Reading Award of Washington State
School Library Journal’s Best Children’s Book of the Year
Tennessee Children’s Choice Book Award
Texas Bluebonnet Award
Utah Children’s Book Award
West Virginia Honor Book
William Allen White Children’s Book Award (Kansas)
Young Hoosier Book Award (Indiana)
BOOKS BY BARBARA PARK:
Almost Starring Skinnybones
Beanpole
Dear God, Help!!! Love, Earl
Don’t Make Me Smile
The Kid in the Red Jacket
Maxie, Rosie, and Earl—Partners in Grime
Mick Harte Was Here
My Mother Got Married (And Other Disasters)
Operation: Dump the Chump
Rosie Swanson: Fourth-Grade Geek for President
Skinnybones
A RANDOM HOUSE BOOK
Text copyright © 1991 by Barbara Park
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover as a Borzoi Book by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1991.
www.randomhouse.com/kids
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-8616
eISBN: 978-0-307-79709-4
RL: 4.3
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
v3.1
To the special man I get to call my dad …
Happy eighty-fifth birthday!
—B.P.
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1. Rosie Swanson—Secret Informer
2. To Run or Not to Run?
3. Me and Thomas Jefferson
4. Thank You, Norman Beeman
5. Star-Spangled Me
6. Hard Feelings
7. The American Way
8. Moon Men
9. Like Wildfire
10. The Second Tuesday in November
11. Some Stuff I’ve Learned
Maxie’s Words
About the Author
1 ROSIE SWANSON—
SECRET INFORMER
“HEY, YOU! NERDHEADS! GET OFF THE SWINGS!”
The voice came from behind us.
Maxie and Earl and I spun around. Three sixth-grade boys were hurrying toward us.
“YEAH, YOU THREE!” the kid shouted again. “THE FAT KID, THE SKINNY KID, AND THE FOUR-EYED, GEEKY GIRL! IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR EARS, DUDES? I SAID, GET OFF THE SWINGS! IT’S OUR TURN.”
Earl jumped right up. Since Earl Wilber is a little on the plumpish side, he always likes to get a head start when he’s making a break for it. “No, wait, Earl! Don’t run,” I said quickly. “If we run, they’ll just chase us. Let’s stay right where we are and pretend we didn’t hear them.”
Nervously, Earl sat back down. Even though he and Maxie are in fifth grade and I’m only in fourth, they still listen to me sometimes.
I hunched over and tried to pull my head inside my turtleneck sweater. Everything fit except my glasses.
Maxie’s eyes were squeezed shut. “We’re dead people,” he muttered. For some reason, he started to spell it. “D-E-A-D P-E-O-P—”
“No, we’re not,” I snapped. “We’re not going to die, Maxie. Who ever heard of dying on a swing set?”
Maxie opened one eye and looked at me. “News flash. Little people die wherever big people kill them. It’s a law of physics. Look it up.”
By now, the sixth-graders were right behind us. Angry that we still hadn’t moved, they grabbed the chains of our swings and began shaking them.
“You guys don’t hear too good, do you?” said the biggest one.
Earl started to whimper a little. I was scared, too. But something inside me just wouldn’t let me give the kid my swing.
“We were here first,” I managed.
The three bullies bent down and laughed in my face. “We were here first, we were here first,” they mimicked in baby voices.
After that, the big one leaned right next to my ear. “GET OFF, GIRLIE!”
I don’t like to be shouted at. Also, I hate being called a girlie.
“No!” I said back. “These are our swings, too, you know.”
Hearing myself say that made me feel a little braver. “If you don’t leave us alone, I’m going to report you to the principal,” I said.
Suddenly, the kid jerked my swing so hard I thought my head would snap off.
“Gee, girlie. I’m shaking in my shoes. Aren’t you, Frankie? Aren’t you shaking in your shoes?” he asked his friend.
After that, the three of them started twisting our chains around and around until our swings were all wound up in little knots. We were way off the ground.
“We don’t care that you’re doing this, you know,” I said. “We actually like this. This is fun. We love being twisted, in fact.”
The bullies stopped twisting.
“ONE … TWO … THREE!” they hollered.
On “three,” they grabbed our swing seats and spun us as hard as they could.
“Bye-bye, you little dipsticks!” they called as they ran off.
I’ve never twirled so fast in my life. Not even on that carnival ride where everyone throws up.
Next to me, Earl was making a high-pitched whining sound—like a siren, sort of. Earl is one of those kids who has to keep nose drops in his pocket to clear out his sinuses. Also, he has a mouth inhaler. But if he needed it now, there was no way he could get it while he was spinning.
Maxie said a bad word. It was only one syllable, but he dragged it out for the entire time he was untwisting.
It took forever for us to unwind. I mean it. It seemed like we would spin for years. But even after our swings stopped, none of us got up right away. We just laid our heads on our knees and moaned for a while until the world stopped moving so fast.
Finally, I held on to the chain with one hand and stood up. I tried to smooth out my dress without falling over.
“There. See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” I asked.
The two of them moaned some more.
“I don’t care. We did the right thing by not running,” I said. “Bullies like that make me sick. They don’t own the school, you know. Sometimes kids like us just have to stand up for our rights.”
Maxie raised his head. His eyes looked like cartoon eyes—all round and white, with a little black dot in the middle.
Earl was holding his hand over his mouth, trying not to throw up.
“Okay, okay. I know it wasn’t fun,” I said. “But at least we didn’t give in. We’re just as much a part of this school as anybody else. And it’s time we acted like it.”
Slowly, Maxie got off the swing. He helped Earl stand up. Then they both fell over in the grass.
I still can’t believe I’m best friends with these two. But I am.
I gave them each a hand. “Come on, you guys. We need to go report those creeps to the principal’s office before the bell rings.”
Earl shook his head. “Oh no. No way, Rosie. Forget it. I’m not squealing. And besides, I’m never setting foot in the principal’s office again. I still get nightmares about the last time we were all in there. Real nightmares, I mean. The kind where I wake up all tangled in the sheets and I have to turn on the light.”
“I agree,” said Maxie. “If Mr. Shivers gets to know the three of us any better, we’ll be on his Christmas list.”
I just sighed. I hated to admit it, but I knew they were right. It wasn’t even November yet, and each of us had been to the office two times already. Actually, it’s where we first met.
I was sent for passing notes. I wasn’t passing them to the other kids, though. I was passing them to my teacher, Mr. Jolly. None of my classmates knows this about me, but in my head, I picture myself as Rosie Swanson—Secret Informer. I report on rule breakers. I think of it as my job, sort of.
Even Maxie and Earl don’t know I’m a secret informer. I mean, they know I’m a nut about following school rules and everything. Like I always make them cross at the crosswalks, for instance. But I’ve never told them about the note writing and how I tell on people. I know they’d think I’m a tattletale. And I’m not.
Secret informers are different from tattletales. We don’t tell on other kids just to get them in trouble. We do it for their own good. Reporting illegal activities to your teacher helps bad kids understand that they can’t get away with stuff, and they become better citizens.
I’ve been a secret informer since the summer I turned seven. That’s the summer my mother and I went into a candy store at the beach and I spotted an old lady stealing a piece of saltwater taffy. She took it out of one of the jars, unwrapped it, and popped it right into her mouth without paying for it.
I couldn’t believe it! I’m talking about a grandma here. Except for when they drive, you almost never see grandmas break the law.
I still remember how I stopped what I was doing and watched her chew. Only instead of being embarrassed, she winked at me. You know … like we were both in on this together.
I’ve thought about it a lot since then. And I’ve decided that winking was even worse than taking the candy. Because that old lady tried to make a little girl think it was okay to steal. And that was just wrong, you know? It was just plain wrong.
I still get angry about it. Since then, I’ve taught myself to say “The old lady took a taffy” without moving my lips, but I doubt that I’ll ever get to use it.
Anyway, after that happened, I decided that I was never going to just stand around while somebody broke the law again. So that’s when I became a secret informer.
I’ve had a lot of success with spying over the years. Take Ronald Milligan, for instance. Since I wrote a secret note to my teacher, Ronald has been asked to stop blowing his nose in the drinking fountain. I take a lot of pride in that.
But still, for some reason, my teacher, Mr. Jolly, hasn’t really appreciated my spying as much as you’d expect. Like I mentioned, that’s why he finally sent me to the principal’s office. To get me to stop writing notes. And the office is where I met Maxie and Earl.
As I was remembering all of this, Earl reached in his pocket and unwrapped a brand-new package of Rolaids. In addition to his other medical problems, Earl Wilber has what you call a nervous stomach.
“I wish I ran this school,” he said. “If I ran this school, I’d lock those sixth-grade creeps in a dark, smelly dungeon. Then I’d hire one of those professional wrestler guys to bully them until they cried.”
Maxie nodded. “I know just how you feel,” he said. “But Rosie’s probably right, Earl. We shouldn’t let farkleberries like that get to us.”
Farkleberry is one of Maxie’s special words. Finding weird words in the dictionary is sort of a hobby of his. That’s because he’s a giant brain.
Maxie’s very different from Earl and me. But even though the three of us aren’t anything alike—if you put us all together, we’d make a pretty well-rounded person, I think.
Earl was still grouching. “Yeah, well, I still wish I could run the school. They’re having those stupid class elections pretty soon, and the same popular kids will get elected who always get elected. And not one of them knows the least bit about how it feels to be called names and pushed around.”
“Run,” said Maxie.
Suddenly, Earl’s face went funny. “Oh geez! Not again!” he yelled. Then, thinking the bullies were back, he took off across the playground.
Maxie rolled his eyes. “No, Earl! Come back!” he hollered after him. “I meant run for office.”
Earl stopped in his tracks. “Oh,” he said, embarrassed.
He turned around and came back. “Yeah, right. Me … president of the fifth grade,” he said. “Very funny, Mr. Funnyperson. That’s so funny I forgot to laugh.”
Maxie shrugged. “Well, you’re always complaining about the creeps around here, aren’t you? So maybe if you ran for president of the fifth grade, you could change some stuff.”
I thought about what he was saying. I mean, it’s just weird, you know? But the idea that one of us could actually run for class office had never even occurred to me before.
“What about me?” I said. “I bet I’d make a pretty good fourth-grade president, don’t you think? Huh, you guys? Don’t you think I’d be good?”
Maxie and Earl gave each other one of those looks.
“What did you do that for? What’s wrong with me being president of the fourth grade?” I asked.
Earl shrugged. “Nothing’s exactly wrong with it, Rosie,” he said. “It’s just that sometimes you can be a little bit …”
He hemmed and hawed. “Well, you know …”
“Bossy and overbearing,” said Max.
“I am not,” I snapped. “I’m not bossy and whatever that other word means. I just happen to believe in following the rules, that’s all. What’s so wrong with that? In case you’ve forgotten, my grandfather happens to be a retired police detective.”
Maxie’s mouth dropped open. “No! Really? You’re kidding! Gee, I think that’s only the jillionth time you’ve told us that. Isn’t it, Earl? Isn’t that the jillionth?”
Earl pretended to count on his fingers. Then he shook his head. “The jillionth and one,” he said.
They were only teasing, but it still hurt my feelings. I’m very proud of my grandfather. He’s part of the reason I’m such a model citizen.
He and my mother and I all live in the same house that Mom grew up in. It’s just the three of us, too. We’re sort of a different kind of family, I guess you’d say. We would have been a regular kind of family, but my father and my grandmom both died when I was a baby.
I don’t have any brothers or sisters. I used to have a girlfriend who was almost like a sister. But we haven’t spoken in over a year. It wasn’t my fault, exactly. She spray-painted
a bad word on the sidewalk and I was forced to report her to the police.
Anyhow, even though my granddad is retired, he still hangs around the police station a lot. Sometimes when I go down there with him, this one sergeant lets me wear his hat. I’ve met criminals down there before, too. Not the real dangerous kind. But still, most of them haven’t shaved for a while.
“It’s not very nice calling me bossy, you know,” I told Maxie. “And anyway, I don’t care what you say, I still think I’d make a good class president. I have excellent values and I follow the rules. Plus also, I have a bullhorn, which I could bring to school to keep the children in order.”
Maxie raised his eyebrows. “Are you serious?” he asked. “You have a real, actual bullhorn? An official one? Like the cops use on TV?”
“Yup,” I said. “It’s my grandfather’s, but I’ve used it before. Just ask my mother if you don’t believe me. Last summer I snuck outside with it. And I ordered her to come out of the house with her hands up.”
Now Earl was impressed, too. “Wow! And she did it? She really raised her hands and came outside?”
“Well, kind of,” I said. “I mean, at first she just went to the window and yelled at me to put it down. But then some of the neighbors who were out in their yards started chanting, ‘Come out, Helen! Come out!’ So finally she ran outside and snatched the bullhorn away from me.”
“Wow,” said Earl, again.
“Yeah, wow,” I agreed. “A bullhorn is a pretty powerful piece of equipment, all right.”
I didn’t tell them the best part about that day, though. It would have sounded stupid to say it. But the best part of that day was how that bullhorn turned a little voice like mine into a loud, booming voice that everyone listened to.
A voice of authority, I guess you’d say.
And I’m telling you the truth … a voice of authority can make you feel bigger than anything.
2 TO RUN OR
NOT TO RUN?
ROSEBUD SWANSON FOR PRESIDENT OF THE FOURTH GRADE
The idea kept flashing on and off in my head like a neon sign. I’m not kidding. Ever since I mentioned it on the playground, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.