Stuart Goes to School Read online

  by Sara

  Pennypacker

  illustrated by

  Martin Matje

  by Sara Pennypacker

  illustrated by Martin Matje

  Orchard Books

  An Imprint of Scholastic Inc.

  New York

  Text copyright © 2003 by Sara Pennypacker

  Illustrations copyright © 2003 by Martin Matje

  All rights reserved. Published by Orchard Books, an

  imprint of Scholastic Inc. orchard books and design

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  library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

  Pennypacker, Sara

  Stuart Goes to School / by Sara Pennypacker;

  illustrated by Martin Matje. — 1 st ed. p. cm.

  Summary: Worried about his first day at a new

  school, eight-year-old Stuart wears his magic cape

  and hopes that it will help him.

  ISBN 0-439-30182-3

  [1. First day of school —Fiction. 2. Worry —Fiction.

  3. Clothing and dress —Fiction. 4. Magic —Fiction.]

  I. Matje, Martin, ill. II. Title. PZ7.P3856 Sm 2002

  [Fic] —dc21 2001049781 CIP AC

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-31183-0

  First edition, July 2003

  The text type was set in 12-pt. Sabon.

  Title type was handlettered by Martin Matje.

  Display type was set in Bad Cabbage ICG.

  Book design by Marijka Kostiw

  For my guys, Hilly and Caleb.

  —S. P.

  To my mother, who gave me my cape.

  —M. M.

  DAY ONE

  As soon as he woke up, Stuart knew it was going to be

  a bad day. You can smell a bad day coming. It smells a

  lot like sour milk.

  The first bad thing about the day was hanging on

  his bedpost. A pair of green plaid pants, so bright they

  hurt his eyes. A shirt with little cowboys on it.

  Stuart was excellent at worrying. In fact, worrying

  was his best thing. But he had forgotten to worry about

  this. Every year, his mother made

  him dress up for the first day of

  school. In clothes nobody else would

  wear.

  Stuart and his family had just

  moved to Punbury. He would be

  new at school, so he already had

  plenty to worry about. What if he

  forgot everything he learned in

  second grade? What if he couldn’t

  find the bathroom? What if he could

  find the bathroom, but he got stuck

  inside and the teacher had to get him

  out with firemen? What if nobody

  wanted to be his friend?

  And now this: green plaid hurt-your-eyes pants and

  a cowboy shirt. Where did his mother even find clothes

  like these?

  “Stuart,” he heard his mother call. “I left you a nice

  new outfit. It was your father’s when he was in third

  grade! Now isn’t that something?”

  Stuart buried himself under his quilt. It would be

  impossible to make friends now. The other kids were

  going to fall down left and right laughing at him. Even

  cowboys would fall down left and right laughing at

  him.

  He poked his head back out.

  Wait a minute. He had a cape

  now. He had made it last week out

  of a hundred old ties. Just as he’d

  hoped, magical things had been hap-

  pening since he had started wearing

  it. Adventures. A different one each

  day.

  So far, the magical thing of the day

  had been a surprise. But maybe. . . .

  Stuart pointed his brain at the ugly outfit. He

  squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated powerful brain

  waves on making it disappear. He concentrated hard

  until he smelled brain-smoke coming from behind his

  eyeballs. He opened his eyes.

  The outfit was still there. It looked more horrible

  than before.

  Stuart sighed deeply and got out of bed. He put on

  the awful clothes and wrapped his cape around himself.

  One good thing about a cape: At least no one could see

  what he was wearing underneath. He could go to

  school in his underwear if he wanted to.

  Not that he wanted to, of course.

  Stuart’s family was eating breakfast when he came

  downstairs.

  “Good morning,” said his father cheerfully. He was

  going off to his job as a carpet cleaner.

  “Good morning,” said his mother cheerfully. She

  was going off to her job as a beautician.

  “Good morning,” said Aunt Bubbles cheerfully. She

  was going off to her job as a baker.

  “I don’t think it’s a good morning,” answered

  Stuart glumly. He was going off to be a total flop as a

  third grader.

  Stuart had a lot to worry about, so he spread it out.

  On the bus ride he worried about the bathroom

  thing, of course. And what if he were the shortest kid in

  the class?

  Climbing up the big steps to school, he worried that

  his fives might come out backward while he was at the

  blackboard. And what if someone brought egg salad for

  lunch, and the smell made him throw up?

  Dragging himself down the long hall to room

  3B he worried about getting locked inside his

  locker. And what if a wasp were hiding inside his juice

  carton at snack time and stung him, and his lip swelled

  up like a water balloon?

  Stuart found the seat with his name tag and began

  worrying about the bathroom thing again. If worrying

  were a sport, he would have a neck full of gold medals

  by now.

  “Good morning, children,” said the teacher. “My

  name is Mrs. Spindles. Would anyone like to start by

  sharing something for Our Big Interesting World?”

  A girl in the front row bounced up and down in her

  seat so hard that a bunch of barrettes went flying. But

  she had about a hundred left in her hair.

  “Yes, Olivia?” Mrs. Spindles called on her.

  “My daddy went away on important business last

  week. He bro
ught me back this pocketbook. It has real

  plastic diamonds on it.”

  “This used to be a muffin,” said a boy named

  Nacho, proudly holding up a green lump. “I saved it

  under my bed all summer!”

  Everyone in the class said, “Cool, Nacho,” except

  for Olivia, who was still looking for her barrettes.

  Stuart smacked his head and groaned. Our Big

  Interesting World was the third grade name for

  show-and-tell. He wished he had something interesting

  to show. Like the false teeth he had found in the trash

  yesterday. Or the squashed toad from his driveway.

  Then all the kids would say, “Cool, Stuart.”

  But wait! He did have something to show!

  Something so great that all the kids would fight over

  who could be his friend.

  Stuart’s hand shot up. He jumped around in his seat.

  If he’d been wearing barrettes they would have gone

  flying into the next classroom.

  “Yes, Stuart?” Mrs. Spindles said. “Do you have

  something interesting to show us?”

  “Yesss!” shouted Stuart as he ran to the front of the

  room. This was going to be great!

  “I made this cape!” Stuart told the class. “I

  stapled a hundred ties together, and it’s magic!

  Every day I have a new adventure. And look! I put a

  secret purple pocket inside.”

  Stuart whipped open his cape very dramatically. He

  had practiced this in front of the mirror a lot.

  He waited for the kids to say, “Awesome!” or

  “Wow!” or “Cool, Stuart!”

  He waited for a long time. The room was so silent

  Stuart wondered if his ears had stopped working.

  He felt an odd breeze. He looked down and froze in

  horror.

  The awful new outfit had disappeared, just as he

  had wished. But now he was wearing nothing but his

  underpants. In front of the entire class!

  He snapped his cape shut, but it was too late. All the

  kids began to laugh.When Stuart was embarrassed, his

  ears got embarrassed. As the kids laughed, he could feel

  his ears begin to blow up, like sausages on a grill.

  Bigger and redder and hotter they grew, until suddenly

  the room went quiet again.

  “Wow!” said Olivia. “Exactly the color of my

  Malibu Sunset Fashion barrettes.”

  “Wow!” said Nacho, holding two pieces of red con-

  struction paper up to his head. “Giant mutant alien

  radar ears.”

  “Wow!” said the rest of the kids.

  Stuart fled back to his seat and buried his head in

  his arms. He kept it there for the rest of the morning.

  At recess, he hid behind an extra-fat pine tree.

  At lunch, he pretended to be extremely busy count-

  ing his raisins.

  On the bus ride home, he put his lunchbox on the

  seat beside him and stared out the window so no one

  would sit with him.

  He would never make a friend now. Not after this

  morning. But so what? He had a really good friend in

  his old town, and look what happened. He had to move

  away.

  Besides, the kids here looked like a lot of trouble. If

  he made friends with Olivia he’d just spend his whole

  life looking for her barrettes, or admiring her pocket-

  books. If he made friends with Nacho he’d have to

  watch out for moldy food.

  No, it was better this way. He had a maniac cat that

  he loved. He had met the trash collector yesterday, and

  they were going to be partners in saving junk. And he

  had his cape. All he had to do was be a little more care-

  ful about what he wished for from now on.

  DAY TWO

  A brilliant idea woke Stuart up at the crack of dawn.

  “Today I’m going to bring in something so interesting

  for Our Big Interesting World that all the kids will

  forget what happened yesterday,” he told One-Tooth.

  Stuart crept downstairs. Right away, he found a

  potato that looked just like his first grade

  piano teacher. He found an enormous

  hairball that One-Tooth had spit up.

  These were wonderful

  things, of course, but most

  kids had seen potatoes and

  hairballs. To make up for

  what had happened yester-

  day, he would need something they had never

  seen before.

  He raced outside and grabbed a shovel. He

  dug a nice, deep, round hole. It was an excellent

  hole, one of his best. But all that was in it was

  dirt. No gold, no jewels, no mysterious bones.

  No treasureful stuff at all.

  Stuart dug another hole. Nothing but dirt. Again.

  And again, and again, and again.

  Plenty of holes. Plenty of dirt.

  Plenty of nothing to bring in for

  Our Big Interesting World.

  Stuart dropped his shovel. He was getting worried.

  Great things had been happening to him since he had

  made his cape. He had grown toast, he had flown, some

  animals had come over to play.

  But lately, not-so-great things had been

  happening. Yesterday, his clothes had disap-

  peared.

  And now this. Maybe his cape

  wasn’t working anymore. Maybe it

  was turning against him.

  “Stuuuuu-aaaart!

  Time for breakfast!”

  Aunt Bubbles’s voice

  was very small, and Stuart

  could barely see his own

  house in the distance. He must have been digging for a

  long time.

  He bent down to pick up his shovel. It was stuck.

  He tugged and pulled it free, but something was caught

  on the end.

  It was a hole! A hole had peeled out of the ground

  and was dangling from his shovel! This had never

  happened before. But of course, he had

  never had a cape before.

  The hole was beautiful and deli-

  cate, like a bubble with the top cut off.

  Carefully, Stuart lifted it from the shovel and blew the

  dirt off. He folded it up and put it into the pocket of his

  cape.

  Inside, Stuart drank three tall glasses of orange

  juice. Digging was thirsty work. “I have a hole in my

  pocket,” he told his family.

  “A big one?” asked his mother.

  “Yep,” Stuart answered proudly. “Nice and round,

  too.”

  “Don’t put any money in it,” warned his father.

  “I wasn’t going to,” Stuart said.

  “I don’t have time to sew it up today,” said Aunt

  Bubbles.

  “I don’t want you to sew it up,” Stuart explained.

  He smeared a glump of jam over his toast and shook his

  head. Grown-ups.

  All through Our Big Interesting World, Stuart suf-

  fered in silent gloom. One girl took off her shoe and

  showed where a snake had almost

  bitten her. A boy with braces showed

&
nbsp; his collection of things that had

  gotten stuck in them. These kids probably have

  hundreds of friends, Stuart

  thought miserably.

  If only he had more time, he

  probably could have found some-

  thing amazing. By now, all the kids would be crawling

  all over themselves trying to be his friend. “Hey,

  Stuart,” they’d say. “Show us that amazing thing you

  found again!” Stuff like that. Stuart laid his head on his

  desk to imagine what it would be like.

  Just then, one of the big kids knocked on the door

  and handed Mrs. Spindles a note. Mrs. Spindles read

  the note. She gasped and clutched at her throat. Her

  eyes grew so large that Stuart wondered if they were

  going to pop out of her head and go zinging across

  the classroom. He would really like to see something

  like that.

  “Attention, class!” Mrs. Spindles cried. “I have an

  emergency announcement!”

  “Holes!” she read. “Hundreds and hundreds of

  holes! Neighborhoods have been finding them all

  morning. Detectives and scientists have been called in.

  Be on the alert today, and report anything unusual.”

  Mrs. Spindles dropped the note. “Oh, my dearest

  blue heavens!” she wailed. “Whatever could it be?”

  “Hailstones,

  probably,” Olivia

  said. “I’m going to

  have to wear a

  lot more barrettes.”

  “Giant earth-

  worms,” Nacho

  said. “We’re going

  to need some really big robins to eat them!”

  All the kids had lots of ideas for what could have

  made so many holes. Each idea made Stuart

  feel worse.

  Finally he raised his hand. “Maybe it

  25

  was a kid,” he said in a voice that came out a little

  squeakier than he wanted. “Maybe a plain old regular