clipboard so Einstein could see all the
signatures. “The board said I got
enough to speak tonight.”
Ned had come such a long way
from a few months ago when he was
the quietest kid in class with Einstein
as his only friend. Now he had enough
confidence to ask several hundred
people to help his cause.
“Great job,” Einstein said. “Let me
get my notes to help you prepare.”
“Your facts will be really helpful,”
Ned said. “Unfortunately, I won’t be
able to tell everyone where I got all
this good information.”
“That’s okay.” Einstein had all the
faith in the world that Ned
would get the job done.
AMANDA TAWKTOO
HUGH JEERS
EILEEN DOVER
WILL U. REED
SEYMOUR BOOKS
JUSTIN TIME
CANDY CRUSH
ROBIN BANKS
But as soon as Einstein saw Ned
the next morning, he knew something
was wrong. “Didn’t they let you talk?”
Einstein asked.
“They let me talk, all right,” Ned said.
“I did a presentation with charts—I
even used my father’s laser pointer. It
was a really professional presentation.”
“So what happened?”
“All anyone wanted to do was talk
about the candy corn video,” Ned said.
“I told you that video was a
disaster,” Einstein said.
“Looks like Plans A and B both
failed.”
All the students appeared as if
they’d caught the same strain of
depression virus—Bonnie looked ready
to cry and Ricky just stared at the
top of his desk in a daze.
“We can’t give up!” Einstein said.
“Remember the famous quote: ‘It’s
not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I
stay with problems longer.’”
“Who said that?” Ned asked.
“My namesake, Albert Einstein.”
Einstein pulled himself up a few
inches taller. “If HE didn’t give up,
then WE’RE not giving up either.”
“Hey, do you guys want to come
home with me this weekend?” Ned
asked Einstein and Marlon.
“I can’t,” Einstein said.
Ned looked at his friend with
suspicion. “Why? What’s going on?”
“Nothing!” Einstein lied. “I left some
things at Ms. Moreno’s house.”
“He wants to watch infomercials,”
Marlon said.
Einstein shot Marlon the evil eye.
“Blabbermouth!”
“TV addict,” Marlon whispered back.
“Just for that, you don’t get to use
the slushie maker when I finally get
it,” Einstein said.
“Okay, Marlon, let’s go.” Ned picked
up Marlon’s tank and headed home
for the weekend.
As Einstein watched them go, he
wondered if he was doing the right
thing. Shouldn’t he be with Ned and
Marlon, brainstorming new ways to
save the library?
“Looks like it’s you and me,
Einstein,” Ms. Moreno said as she
packed up her things.
That purse organizer really does
work, Einstein thought. What a great
purchase. He happily went home with
their teacher for the weekend.
It took Albert Einstein a long time
to learn to speak. He may have been
slow with words, but that’s because
Einstein thought in pictures. Most of his
breakthroughs were not performed in
a lab but in his head. He called them
Gedankenexperiments, which means
“thought experiments” in German. For one
of his theories of relativity, he imagined
how someone traveling on a train would
watch lightning bolts hitting the train
differently from how someone standing
on the platform would see them. His
theories might involve a lot of math and
physics, but he thought them up first in
images. Einstein was TIME magazine’s
PERSON OF THE CENTURY in December
1999—not bad for a daydreamer who
hated haircuts and socks.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AhA!
Einstein’s new strategy was to
pretend he was sick so Ms. Moreno
would take him out of the tank to sit
with her on the couch. And it worked!
Once Einstein was settled next to her,
he focused on one thing: gaining
control of the remote.
When Ms. Moreno left the room to
get a cup of tea or a few of the Girl
Scout cookies she kept stashed in the
cupboard, Einstein changed the
channel to a shopping network HE
wanted to watch. Enough with the
fuzzy clown slippers—what about
that musical Twister game? Or the
mini-muffin oven? At one point
during the evening, Ms. Moreno tried
to put Einstein back in his tank, but
Einstein pretended to cry until she let
him stay.
Einstein was mesmerized by the
cookie-decorating machine, the steam
press, the pretzel factory, the jelly
bean bank, and the calligraphy kit. His
favorite was the automatic coin
counter—what a great way to keep
track of all the donations his class
was receiving to save the library. But
thinking about
the padlocked
library suddenly
made him feel
bad.
The shopping
network host
interrupted Einstein’s reverie. “And
here’s something for all you book
lovers out there: beautiful
bookplates!”
Both Einstein and Ms. Moreno sat
up straight.
“Handsome, personalized
bookplates for your home library!”
THIS BOOK
BELONGS TO . . .
YOU!
The announcer continued. “With gold-
embossed lettering.”
“Gold,” Ms. Moreno said in a trance.
“Embossed,” Einstein added.
They both stared at the television
as the host browsed through a large
room filled with shelves and shelves
of books.
Looking at all those wonderful
books, Einstein couldn’t get the
Albert Einstein quote out of his head:
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just
that I stay with problems longer. Had
he abandoned the library problem in
favor of watching TV with Ms.
Moreno? Einstein scurried back to his
tank and his piles of notes.
He spent the next few hours
reviewing his research until he
stumbled onto a piece of information
he’d missed before. This could be it!
Einstein thought. A way to save the
library! He’d need Ned’s help, of
course. Maybe some others’ too.
As he congr
atulated himself on
a job well done, Einstein had no
idea that across the room Ms.
Moreno was hatching a plan of
her own.
I STILL NEED TO
SAVE THE LIBRARY!
I STILL NEED
A NEW PURSE!
The oldest form of money was probably
cattle, which people traded for goods
and services, as far back as 9000 B.C. The
first coins, from around 2000 B.C., were
shaped like cattle and made out of bronze.
America’s initial paper money was issued
in 1690 in Massachusetts. Before that,
people traded deer and elk skins, which
is why the word buck is used to describe
money.
The only woman to appear on any
U.S. paper currency is Martha Washington.
Her portrait was on the one-dollar silver
certificate in 1886, 1891, and 1896. No
other women have been featured on U.S.
paper currency since then.
YOU SAID
ONE BUCK,
RIGHT?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TeLlInG ThE
OtHeRs
Einstein sharpened his pencil to take
notes. He loved Mondays!
“I really bonded with Ms. Moreno
this weekend,” he told Marlon.
“Did you bond over musical waffle
irons?”
“For your information, not every
infomercial product is musical.”
Einstein didn’t tell Marlon that upon
closer inspection, the automatic coin
counter did, in fact, play “The Star-
Spangled Banner.”
“I have a plan I think will work, but
I need your help.” Einstein handed Ned
a piece of paper.
“This is soggy,” Ned said.
“It was in my cheek pouch,” Einstein answered.
“Your handwriting is terrible,” Ned
complained.
“JUST READ IT!”
Einstein said.
Ned squinted to read Einstein’s tiny
hamster handwriting. “Hey! This could
work!”
Principal Decker strode into the
room carrying Twinkles.
“Okay, everyone!” Ms. Moreno said.
“Saturday morning we’re having a
giant yard sale to raise money for
the library.”
“A SCHOOL yard sale,” Marlon joked.
Bonnie’s hand shot up. “Can I help?”
“There’ll be lots of things for
everyone to do,” Ms. Moreno said. “I
just sent an e-mail to all your
parents too.”
“Will this mess up your plan?” Ned
whispered to Einstein.
“Let’s try her plan first,” Einstein
said. “We’ll keep mine as backup.”
Einstein looked at Ms. Moreno handing
out assignments to his classmates. As
much as he was bothered by her in
the past for luring contestants away
from AnSwEr . . . ThAt . . .
QuEsTiOn, he had to admit she
really cared about her students.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Principal Decker asked their teacher.
“Even if you raise a lot of money,
there’s no guarantee it’ll be enough to
reopen the library.”
“We have to try,” Ms. Moreno said.
“Okay, Saturday morning it is,”
Principal Decker agreed.
Francis Scott Key was a thirty-five-year-
old lawyer who was negotiating with the
British to release an American prisoner
during the War of 1812. The British
agreed to release the prisoner, but only
after they attacked Fort McHenry in
Baltimore. Francis Scott Key witnessed the
bombarding of the fort from the deck of
a truce ship; in the morning, he watched
the troops at Fort McHenry replace the
war-torn U.S. flag with an even larger one.
While on the boat, he wrote a poem that
later became “The Star Spangled Banner.”
It was published in September 1814.
When the poem was turned into song,
it was set to the tune of a lighthearted
British ditty. The song was named the
national anthem in 1931. The flag that
flew over Fort McHenry that day now
rests in the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WiLl It WoRk?
On Saturday morning, several cars
pulled into the school parking lot.
Einstein recognized Ned’s parents’
car, as well as Ricky’s and Bonnie’s.
He was excited to see the school
librarian, Ms. Remington, again.
Suddenly an eighteen-wheeler
pulled into the parking lot.
“It’s showtime!” Ms. Moreno said.
Ms. Moreno, wearing overalls and
work gloves, opened the truck’s large
door. Inside, the truck was stacked
floor to ceiling with all of Ms.
Moreno’s infomercial gadgets. She
stood on the bed of the truck and
addressed parents and students.
“Let’s unload this baby!”
Ms. Remington, the parents, and
the students made a human conveyor
belt and unloaded the truck onto the
rows and rows of tables Mr. Wright,
the custodian, had set up in the
parking lot. Soon the tables were full
of furry shelves, cat mittens, a
french fry holder for your car, and
a scale in the shape of a dodo bird.
By the time they finished unloading
the truck, there was a line wrapped
twice around the school with eager
shoppers.
“Ms. Moreno is donating all this to
the school?” Ricky asked. “She’s
single-handedly saving the library.”
“Not single-handedly.” Bonnie gave
Ned and Ricky each a large bag.
“We’re going to help her.”
Ned and Ricky looked inside the
bags, then back at Bonnie.
“You can’t possibly think—” Ricky
said.
“That we’re going to WEAR these?”
Ned finished.
“Ms. Moreno isn’t the only one who
should make a sacrifice,” Bonnie said.
“Besides, do you know how long it
took me to make these costumes?”
Bonnie dragged the boys inside to
change. When they all emerged a few
minutes later, Einstein and Marlon
burst out laughing.
“Don’t say a WORD,” Ned said. “I’m
embarrassed enough as it is.”
Bonnie hooked up her music player
to the sound system and hit PLAY.
The candy corn song filled the air.
Everyone sang along as Bonnie, Ned,
and Ricky performed the infamous
dance in the candy corn costumes
Bonnie had made.
“This is GREAT,” Einstein said. “Such
school spirit.”
“As long as YOU aren’t the one
doing the dance this time,” Marlon
said.
“Exactly.”
“I’ve never seen Ned and Ricky so
embarrassed,” Marl
on said. “But
Bonnie sure seems to be having fun.”
Einstein clapped along with the
other students as Ms. Moreno
continued to sell her gadgets.
Ms. Moreno’s plan was working!
Dodo birds lived on the island of
Mauritius in the Indian Ocean for millions
of years, but they became extinct within a
century after explorers visited the island
in 1598. Dodos were three-foot-tall,
flightless birds that weighed fifty pounds.
Because humans—and the animals they
brought with them—were their first
predators, dodos were very trusting and
not prepared to defend themselves.
Another extinct flightless bird species
WAS prepared to defend itself: the Terror
Bird of South America. At ten feet tall,
they were one of the toughest carnivores
of prehistoric times, grabbing large prey
with their pickax beaks and throwing them
against the ground to kill them. Luckily for
neighborhood pets, Terror Birds are now
extinct too.
I THINK I’LL BE
GOING NOW. . . .
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PlAn B
By the end of the day, Ms. Moreno’s
donations raised several thousand
dollars for the Boerring Elementary
library. Ms. Remington gathered the
students and parents to lead them
Einstein the Class Hamster Saves the Library (Einstein the Class Hamster Series) Page 4