Table of Contents
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ALSO BY CLAUDIA MILLS
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Copyright Page
For Carol Lynch Williams
1
Whenever Wilson Williams had a problem, he talked to his hamster, Pip. He had had Pip for only two weeks, but already she understood him better than anybody else in his family did.
“Multiplication was hard enough,” Wilson told Pip on the first Saturday morning in April. “But now we have to do fractions.”
Pip twitched her nose.
“Even worse, Mrs. Porter is giving us a huge test in three weeks.”
Pip blinked.
“But that’s not the worst thing.”
Pip scampered across Wilson’s bedspread. Luckily Wilson had his bedroom door closed so that she couldn’t escape and get lost.
“Wait,” Wilson said to Pip. “Don’t you want to know what the worst thing is?”
He scooped up Pip and held her in both hands, facing him, as he leaned back against his pillow. Her bright little eyes really did look interested.
When Wilson had gotten Pip, her name had been Snuggles, but he had changed it to Pip, short for Pipsqueak. Pip’s brother, Squiggles, was the classroom pet in Wilson’s third-grade classroom.
“The worst thing,” Wilson said, “is that my parents are getting me a math tutor.”
Pip’s eyes widened with indignation.
“I know.” Wilson set her down on his knee. Instead of scurrying away, she sat very still, gazing up at him sadly. But no amount of hamster sympathy could change that one terrible fact.
A math tutor! That meant Wilson would go to school and do fractions, and then after school he’d go see Mrs. Tucker and do more fractions. He’d have fractions homework for Mrs. Porter and more fractions homework for Mrs. Tucker.
And suppose his friends at school found out. Nobody else he knew had a math tutor. There were other kids who were bad at math. There were other kids who thought fractions were hard. There were even other kids who thought fractions were impossible. But Wilson had never heard of any other kid who had a math tutor.
Wilson picked up Pip again and stroked the soft fur on the top of her little head. Pip was the only good thing left in Wilson’s life. From now on, the rest of his life was going to be nothing but fractions.
“Now, come on,” Wilson’s father said at lunch. “Cheer up. The point of a math tutor is to help you.”
“You’ve been struggling so much,” his mother went on. “First with multiplication, and now with fractions. A math tutor will make math come more easily to you.”
Wilson’s little brother, Kipper, who was in kindergarten, spoke up next. “Can I have a math tutor, too? Wilson and I can share the math tutor. Like we share Pip.”
Wilson stopped glaring at his parents and started glaring at Kipper instead. It was annoying enough to have a little brother, but Wilson had to have a little brother who happened to love math, and who was good at it, too.
To the left of Kipper’s plate sat his beanbag penguin, Peck-Peck. To the right sat his beanbag alligator, Snappy.
“What’s a math tutor?” Kipper made Peck-Peck ask in a deep, growly voice. For some strange reason, Kipper seemed to think that was how a penguin should talk.
“Does a math tutor toot on a horn?” Kipper made Snappy ask. “Toot! Toot!” Snappy’s head bobbed up and down with each cheerful toot, as if he were an alligator tugboat.
“Mom!” Wilson complained. “Make Kipper stop!”
But instead of giving a warning look to Kipper, she gave one to Wilson. “Kipper’s just playing.” Then she actually leaned across the table and spoke directly to Snappy. “No, Snappy, a math tutor doesn’t go ‘Toot.’ A math tutor helps people learn math. A math tutor has a very important job.”
This was too much. Who else lived in a family where adults had serious conversations with beanbag alligators?
“Toot! Toot!” Snappy said again, apparently not even listening to the answer to his own stupid question.
“That’s enough, Kipster,” their father said.
Wilson was grateful to him for trying, but it was already too late.
“May I be excused?” Wilson asked.
“You haven’t finished your grilled-cheese sandwich,” his mother said.
“I’m not hungry.” Anymore, Wilson added to himself.
Before Peck-Peck or Snappy could make any further brilliant remarks, Wilson pushed his chair back from the table and fled to his room to have an intelligent conversation with Pip.
Wilson’s best friend, Josh Hernandez, came over at two. As if Wilson’s mother was sorry for not standing up for him at lunch, she took Kipper for a long bike ride so that the two older boys could play undisturbed.
Wilson didn’t have a video game system, and he wasn’t allowed to watch TV on playdates, so he and Josh tried to build the world’s fastest race car with some junk in the garage. His dad made microwave popcorn, and Wilson and Josh had a contest for throwing popcorn up into the air and catching it in their mouths. Wilson won, with seven straight mouth catches to Josh’s four. He began to feel more hopeful about his life.
“Do you have an idea for your science fair project yet?” Josh asked, after missing another popcorn catch. April was science fair month at Hill Elementary.
“Nope.” Wilson had been too busy trying to talk his parents out of making him have a math tutor. “Do you?”
“Uh-huh.”
Wilson could tell Josh was waiting for him to ask what it was. “What is it?”
“I have to warn you,” Josh said. “It’s not just a good idea, it’s a great idea. Are you ready?”
Wilson nodded. He couldn’t believe Josh thought his idea was so wonderful. Usually Josh thought everything was terrible.
“All right. Here it is. At what temperature does a pickle explode?”
Okay, Wilson had to admit, Josh’s idea was wonderful.
“You could do something about popcorn,” Josh offered. “Who is better at catching popcorn in their mouths, boys or girls? Or kids or grownups? Or dogs or cats? Or kids or dogs? Or—”
Wilson shoved him good-naturedly. “I get the idea.”
“You could even thrill Mrs. Porter and use fractions,” Josh suggested. “Like: cats catch half as much popcorn as dogs. Or grownups catch half as much popcorn as kids. Or—”
This time Wilson shoved Josh harder. It was fine for Josh to joke about fractions. Josh was pretty good at math.
Of course, to be fair to Josh, Josh didn’t know that Wilson was about to become the only kid in the history of Hill Elementary to have a math tutor.
Wilson was going to make sure that Josh never found out.
2
At school on Monday, Wilson hung his jacket and backpack on the coatrack and then went to say hi to Squiggles. Squiggles went home with a different student every weekend. Last weekend Squiggles had visited Laura Vicks, the smartest kid in the class. Laura could be a math tutor.
“I hope you’ve all been thinking of ideas for your science fair projects!” Mrs. Porter said to the class.
Wilson had noticed how often teachers’ sentences ended with exclamation marks. He wondered if Mrs. Porter really felt constantly enthusiastic about Colorado history, science fair projects, and fractions, or if she was pretending, the way his parents had pretended that having a math tutor was wonderful! Not embarrassing at all!
“Is anyone ready to share his or her science fair question with the class? Remember,
a science fair project begins with a question that you want to answer.”
Josh’s hand was the first in the air, even before Laura’s. Mrs. Porter looked surprised. “Josh?”
Josh waited for a long moment, and then cleared his throat to speak. “My question is: at what temperature does a pickle explode?”
Wilson could tell that Josh half expected the class to break into thunderous applause. The kids whose faces Wilson could see clearly looked impressed.
Mrs. Porter’s face showed no expression. “How do you plan to go about answering your question, Josh? What will be your procedure?”
“I think I’ll put my pickle in the oven. I’ll check it at three hundred degrees, then at four hundred degrees, and then at five hundred degrees, and keep going until it explodes.”
“And what is your hypothesis ? What is your educated guess about what you think is going to happen?”
“My hypothesis is that when it explodes it will make a big mess.”
The class laughed.
Mrs. Porter smiled, but it was more of a worried smile than a happy smile. “Now, class, we need to talk about the importance of safety as you work on your science fair projects. Josh, have you talked to your parents yet about your idea?”
Josh nodded.
“And what did they say about it?”
“They said I should get a different idea.”
The class laughed again. Mrs. Porter’s smile looked relieved this time. Only Wilson heard Josh whisper, “But I’m not going to.”
“Who else has an idea to share?”
Hands shot up. One kid wanted to see how long people could go without blinking. Another kid wanted to drop pieces of toast to see if toast really did always land butter-side down. Laura’s friend Becca Landry was going to bake cookies and leave out different ingredients to see which ingredient was the most important. Laura was going to do something complicated with magnets and batteries. If any other kid had offered that idea, Wilson would have known that the kid’s parents had thought it up. But Laura was as good in science as she was in math. She could be a science tutor as well as a math tutor.
Math tutor. Wilson had almost forgotten. He slumped down in his chair. He was supposed to have his first tutoring session with Mrs. Tucker after school on Wednesday. Instead of doing cool things like going to Josh’s house to play video games or make a pickle explode, Wilson would be going to some strange lady’s house to spend an hour chatting with her about fractions.
“So many wonderful ideas!” Mrs. Porter said. “Now get out your math books. It’s time for math.”
Time for fractions.
Wilson meant to pay attention during math. If he could only learn how to do fractions by three o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, he could tell his parents, “Guess what? I can do fractions now!” Then they could call Mrs. Tucker and cancel the appointment. But he kept drawing pictures on his math worksheet instead: pictures of Pip, pictures of Squiggles, pictures of falling toast, pictures of puffed-up pickles ready to pop.
Maybe he would show the pictures to his parents. They would exchange glances, and then his mother would say, “Wilson is so talented at drawing. I don’t think someone who is going to grow up to be an artist needs to learn how to do fractions, do you, dear?” And his father would agree. After all, Michelangelo had been a very great artist. Wilson had never heard that Michelangelo was good at fractions.
Mrs. Porter was saying something about numerators and denominators. One of them was the number on top of the little line in a fraction, and one of them was the number on the bottom. Why not just say top and bottom?
“If the numerators of two fractions are the same, the fraction with the smaller denominator is the larger fraction,” Mrs. Porter said.
Wilson drew Pip eating a piece of toast. He drew Squiggles eating a pickle.
“So which fraction is larger?” Mrs. Porter asked. “One-fifth or one-eighth? Let me hear from some of you quieter students. Wilson?”
Uh-oh. The answer had something to do with the numerator and the denominator, with the top and the bottom. But which was which?
Eight was bigger than five. That much Wilson knew.
“One-eighth?” he guessed.
“No,” Mrs. Porter said. She explained it again, but Wilson still didn’t understand. She could explain it a thousand times, and Wilson still wouldn’t understand.
Wilson had a better idea than Josh’s for a science fair project: what was the best way to make a math book explode?
3
After school Wilson met Kipper outside the kindergarten room so they could walk home together.
“Guess what?” Kipper shouted as soon as he saw Wilson.
Wilson shrugged. He wasn’t in the mood for guessing, especially if the guess had anything to do with Peck-Peck and Snappy, each clutched in one of Kipper’s hands.
“You know how you and Josh were talking about the science fair when Mom and I got home from our bike ride on Saturday?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“My class is going to do the science fair, too!”
“So?”
“So I’m going to have a science fair project! With one of those big white boards that folds up, with pictures and words all over it! Our parents can help with the writing part, Mrs. Macky said. Brothers and sisters can help. You can help!”
Hooray, Wilson thought glumly.
“And—what’s the long, hard word that starts with H? Hippopotamus?”
“Hypothesis.”
“I’m going to have a hypothesis!”
Wilson gave in and returned Kipper’s huge grin. It was great, in a way, how little kids could still be so excited about everything. And no little kid was ever more excited than Kipper.
Wilson felt a lot less like grinning on Wednesday afternoon when he and his mother, Kipper, Peck-Peck, and Snappy set out to walk to Mrs. Tucker’s house for his first day of math tutoring.
“You don’t have to walk with me,” Wilson objected. “It’s only a few blocks.”
“I want to go with you today,” his mother said. “At least for your first session. To make sure you find Mrs. Tucker’s house and to introduce you to each other.”
Wilson sighed. He didn’t mind so much that his mother was coming with him; he minded that Kipper was coming with him—Kipper and Snappy and Peck-Peck. But of course Kipper was too young to be left at home alone. Instead, Kipper would show off, and make Snappy and Peck-Peck talk about fractions, and Mrs. Tucker would think how cute Kipper was, and how smart. And how un-cute Wilson was, and how dumb.
Luckily, when they reached Mrs. Tucker’s house—a yellow house with bright blue shutters and hundreds of daffodils in bloom—Wilson’s mother told Kipper to wait quietly.
“I want to talk to the math tutor!” Kipper whined.
Their mother silenced Kipper with a glance.
Wilson wasn’t sure what a math tutor would look like. When she opened the door, Mrs. Tucker turned out to be a small, birdlike woman, hardly taller than Wilson. She was as colorful as her house, wearing a long purple skirt, a yellow sweater, and red and blue glass beads. At least she wasn’t wearing earrings shaped like numbers, or a sweatshirt with equations on it.
Wilson’s mother presented him to Mrs. Tucker, handed her a check, gave Wilson a quick hug, and left with Kipper.
Wilson wished he could go with them.
“Come on in!” Mrs. Tucker said.
Wilson did.
Mrs. Tucker led Wilson to a room off her kitchen. In it was a table and chairs, like the table and chairs in Wilson’s classroom. A low bookshelf held lots of books, probably all boring books about math. But then Wilson recognized a couple of the titles: Charlotte’s Web and one of the Harry Potter books.
“So,” Mrs. Tucker said, once Wilson was seated at the table. “Your mother said you need some help with fractions.”
“I guess so.” He needed help eliminating fractions from the planet.
The thought made him smile, a
nd Mrs. Tucker said, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, tell me. You just thought of something funny. If we’re going to be spending two hours a week together, we might as well share anything funny.”
Two hours a week? Wilson had thought he was coming once a week. But so far Mrs. Tucker was nice, so he told her about eliminating fractions from the planet.
She laughed. “All right. Poof! All fractions are gone! If you ruled the world, what would there be instead of fractions?”
“Drawing. And hamsters.”
“Do you have a hamster?”
Wilson told her about Pip and Squiggles.
“Great! Once I had two hamsters, named Twitchell and Boo-Boo.”
Mrs. Tucker pulled out a large sheet of paper and three tubs, one of markers, one of crayons, and one of colored pencils.
“Draw me some hamsters,” she said. “Draw me four hamsters.”
Wilson stared at her. He knew his mother wasn’t paying Mrs. Tucker so that he could sit at Mrs. Tucker’s house drawing hamsters. He could sit drawing hamsters at home for free. But he wasn’t about to complain and beg to do fractions instead.
And pretty soon he was doing fractions, sort of.
Pip was ¼ of the group of four hamsters.
Squiggles and Pip together were of the group of four hamsters.
Twitchell was ¼ of the group.
Twitchell and Boo-Boo together were of the group.
When the hour was over, Wilson had filled four large sheets of paper with hamster drawings, and Mrs. Tucker had never once used the words numerator or denominator .
Wilson had to admit it hadn’t been as bad as he had thought it would be. But numerator and denominator had to be coming. Mrs. Porter’s test wasn’t going to be a hamster-drawing test, where kids passed if they could draw ten hamsters in fifteen minutes. At school they were even starting to add fractions together. With Wilson’s luck, soon they’d be subtracting fractions, and multiplying fractions, and dividing fractions. Wilson would still be the only kid who couldn’t do it, however many hamsters he drew.
Fractions = Trouble! Page 1