Freaky Friday

by Mary Rodgers

Overview

Annabel thinks her mom has the best life. If she were a grown-up, she could do whatever she wanted! Then one morning she wakes up to find she's turned into her mother . . . and she soon discovers it's not as easy as it looks!

Disney brings this popular and funny favorite to the silver screen in a new, totally modern story, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060570101
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/17/2003
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	4.19(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.44(d)
Lexile:	730L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Mary Rodgers was an accomplished author, screenwriter, and composer. She authored Freaky Friday, a book that has sold more than a million copies and has been made into two movies. Mary was the creator of two other novels for young readers, Summer Switch and A Billion for Boris, as well as the music for the musical Once Upon a Mattress. Mary Rodgers lived in New York City until her death in 2014.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

You are not going to believe me, nobody in their right minds could possibly believe me, but it's true, really it is!

When I woke up this morning, I found I'd turned into my mother. There I was, in my mother's bed, with my feet reaching all the way to the bottom, and my father sleeping in the other bed. I had on my mother's nightgown, and a ring on my left hand, I mean her left hand, and lumps and pins all over my head."I think that must be the rollers," I said to myself, "and if I have my mother's hair, I probably have her face, too."

I decided to take a look at myself in the bath-room mirror. After all, you don't turn into your mother every day of the week; maybe I was imagining it-or dreaming.

Well, I wasn't. What I saw in that mirror was absolutely my mother from top to toe, complete with no braces on the teeth. Now ordinarily, I don't bother to brush too often-it's a big nuisance with all those wires-but my mother's teeth looked like a fun job, and besides, if she was willing to do a terrific thing like turning her body over to me like that, the least I could do was take care of her teeth for her. Right? Right.

You see, I had reason to believe that she was responsible for this whole happening. Because last night, we had a sort of an argument about something and I told her one or two things that had been on my mind lately.

As a matter of fact, if it's OK with you, I think I'd better start back a little farther with some family history, or you won't know what I'm talking about or who (whom?).

My name is Annabel Andrews. (No middle name, I don't even have a nickname. I've been trying to get them to call me Bubbles at school, but it doesn'tseem to catch on.) I'm thirteen; I have brown hair, brown eyes, and brown fingernails. (That's a joke-actually, I take a lot of baths.) I'm five feet; I don't remember what I weigh but I'm watching it, although my mother says it's ridiculous, and I'm not completely mature in my figure yet. Maybe by the summer though.

My father is William Waring Andrews; he's called Bill; he's thirty-eight; he has brown hair which is a little too short, but I've seen worse, and blue eyes; he's six feet (well, five eleven and a half); and he's a fantastically cool person. He's an account executive at Joffert and Jennings, and last year his main account was Fosphree. If you're into the environment thing at all, you know what that is: no phosphates, low sudsing action, and, according to my mother, gray laundry.

We had boxes of the stuff all over the kitchen. You couldn't give it away. This year, he has New Improved Fosphree (That's what they think!), plus something called Francie's Fortified Fish Fingers. Barf time! If there's anything more disgusting than fortified fish, I don't know what.

Oh yes, I do, I just thought of what's worse. My brother. He is I cannot begin to tell you how disgusting. It may not be a nice thing to say but, just between you and me, I loathe him. I'm not even going to bother to describe him-it's a waste of time. He looks like your average six-year-old with a few teeth out, except that, as my grandmother keeps saying, "Wouldn't you know it'd be the boy who gets the long eyelashes and the curly locks? It just doesn't seem fair." No, it certainly doesn't, but then what's fair? These days, not much. Which is exactly what I was trying to tell my mother last night when we had the fight. I'll get to that in a minute, but first a few facts about Ma.

Her name is Ellen Jean Benjamin Andrews, she's thirty-five-which makes her one of the youngest mothers in my class-she has brown hair and brown eyes. (We're studying Mendel. I must be a hybrid brown. With one blue and one brown-eyed parent you're supposed to get two brown-eyed kids and two blue-eyed kids. So far there are only two kids in our family, but look who's already gotten stuck with the brown eyes. Me. The sister of the only blue-eyed ape in captivity. That's what I call him. The blue-eyed ape. Ape Face for short. His real name is Ben.) Anyway, back to my mother. Brown hair, brown eyes, and, as I've already mentioned, nice straight teeth which I did not inherit, good figure, clothes a little on the square side; all in all, though, she's prettier than most mothers. But stricter.

That's the thing. I can't stand how strict she is. Take food, for instance. Do you know what she makes me eat for breakfast? Cereal, orange juice, toast, an egg, milk, and two Vitamin C's. She's going to turn me into a blimp. Then for lunch at school, you have one of two choices. You can bring your own bag lunch, with a jelly sandwich or a TV dinner (They're quite good cold.) and a Coke, or if you're me, you have to eat the hot meal the school gives you, which is not hot and I wouldn't give it to a dog. Alpo is better. I know because our dog eats Alpo and I tried some once.

She's also very fussy about the way I keep my room. Her idea of neat isn't the same as mine, and besides, it's my room and I don't see why I can't keep it any way I want. She says it's so messy nobody can clean in there, but if that's true, how come it looks all right when I come home from school? When I asked her that last night, she just sighed.

A few other things we fight about are my hair-she wants me to have it trimmed but I'm not falling for that again (The last time it was "trimmed" they hacked six inches off it!)-and my nails which I bite.

But the biggest thing we fight about is freedom, because I'm old enough to be given more than I'm getting.

Freaky Friday. Copyright © by Mary Rodgers. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.