Perfectly Chelsea

by Claudia Mills, Jacqueline Rogers (Illustrator)

Overview

Chelsea learns she is perfectly human

If Chelsea Garing likes anything better than school, it's church, especially when she gets the chance to shine. Unfortunately, Chelsea can't perform perfectly every time. One day, when she's serving as acolyte, her candlelighter unexpectedly goes out. Another day, when she's acting a role from the Good Samaritan story in Sunday school, annoying Danny Repetti plows into her. Why her friend Naomi Goldberg doesn't find Danny unbearable is beyond Chelsea. During fourth-grade gym, Danny makes a remark about Hanukkah that Chelsea is sure has offended Naomi -- yet it hasn't! A much more serious matter perplexes Chelsea: how can God let people die?

Chelsea Garing may not always be at her best for God or man, but she learns to accept everyone's shortcomings -- including her own -- in this thoughtful, funny portrait of a child who loves her life at church. Warm, lively drawings by Jacqueline Rogers complement the story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466854024
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/17/2013
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Claudia Mills is the author of many children's books. Her last chapter book, 7 X 9 = Trouble!, was an ALA Notable Book. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Jacqueline Rogers is a veteran illustrator of children's books. She lives in Chatham, New York.

Claudia Mills is the acclaimed author of many books for children including the Franklin School Friends children's book series, including Cody Harmon, King of Pets and Simon Ellis, Spelling Bee Champ. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Like an Angel

Chelsea Garing sat in church with her parents, in the fifth pew on the right, an imagined halo hovering above her neat, just-combed hair. Three of the boys from her fourth-grade Sunday school class, including Danny Repetti, were sitting directly in front of Chelsea, attempting to balance their hymnals on their heads. Chelsea tried not to look at them.

Instead of watching the boys' antics, Chelsea began folding her church bulletin into a paper fortune-teller. All the girls at school were making them. They were hard work. You had to start with a square piece of paper, for one thing, and the church bulletin wasn't square. Luckily, Chelsea was good at crafts.

"Do you have a pair of scissors in your purse?" Chelsea asked her mother. The organist hadn't started the prelude yet, so it was all right to talk or play quietly. She hoped Danny and his friends would stop clowning around once they heard the first chords of the organ. She doubted it.

"Yes, I do," Chelsea's mother said. Her purse contained everything.

Chelsea cut the bulletin into a square. She saw that she was cutting off most of the Unison Prayer, the prayer the minister had printed out for the congregation to read aloud together. That was all right. Chelsea could improvise. She knew what to pray about: the first math test of the year, which was coming up at the end of September, the goal she wanted to score in her next soccer game, Danny Repetti's teasing. She didn't need any suggestions from the minister.

"May I have a pencil?"

Her mother handed her one. Then Chelsea started folding the paper and writing out color words, numbers, and her own made-up answers to questions someone might ask the fortune-teller. When she had finished, and the fortune-teller was puffed into its cup-like, cootie-catcher shape, she turned to her mother. "Ask me a question," she said.

"Is Petey going to be good in the nursery today?"

Petey was Chelsea's three-year-old brother. Sometimes he had fun playing in the church nursery with the other toddlers; sometimes he didn't.

"Okay," Chelsea said. "Pick a color." She pointed to the four colors written on the fortune-teller: pink, purple, yellow, and green.

"Purple."

"P-U-R-P-L-E." Chelsea opened and shut the fortune-teller as she said each letter. On the "E," she opened it to reveal four numbers.

"Now pick a number."

"Seven."

"One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven." Chelsea clicked the fortune-teller seven times. Now when she opened it, four different numbers appeared inside.

"Pick another number."

"Three."

Chelsea peeked under the number three to see what she had written there.

"Absolutely not," she read aloud, and giggled. "According to the fortune-teller, Petey will not be good in the nursery today."

Her mother sighed, as if suspecting this was all too true, but there was a twinkle in her eyes. Chelsea's father, seated next to her mother, gave a low chuckle.

"Now I'm going to ask it a question," Chelsea said. "Will I be beautiful when I grow up?"

She went through the fortune-telling motions again. The answer came up: Yes. Chelsea was pleased. Maybe she wouldn't always have plain old straight brown hair.

Her mother put her arm around Chelsea. "The fortune-teller got that one correct. But, honey, you know that the fortune-teller can't really tell fortunes. Only God knows what the future has in store for us. This is just a game, right?"

"I know." But it was funny how often the fortuneteller was accurate. From the nursery Chelsea could hear the distant sound of a young child wailing. Petey.

The organist began to play a soft, sad piece of music. Minor key, Chelsea guessed from her piano lessons. Probably Bach. In front of her, the boys had put their hymnals down, but they had rolled their bulletins into long sticks, with which they were now dueling.

Silently, Chelsea asked the fortune-teller another question. "Will I do a wonderful job as acolyte today?" The acolyte carried a tall candlelighter down the aisle during the opening hymn and lit the two candles on the altar. Then, at the end of the service, the acolyte marched back to the altar to put out the candles during the closing hymn. A different child was acolyte each week. This was the eleventh time that Chelsea had been the acolyte since she had first served as one back in first grade. There were a lot of children in Chelsea's church, so everybody had to take turns.

Chelsea loved being acolyte. Some kids, such as Danny Repetti, practically jogged down the aisle, wearing any old thing — jeans with holes in the knees, baggy pants half falling down. When Chelsea was acolyte, she wore a pretty dress and shiny shoes, as she was wearing today. She walked down the aisle slowly and majestically. Being acolyte was like being a bride, with all eyes upon you — better than being a bride, because you didn't have to have a groom.

As the organist played on, Chelsea clicked through her fortune. Color: green. G-R-E-E-N. Number: three. Number: two. She felt a twinge of nervousness as she lifted the paper. Would she do a wonderful job as acolyte today?

"No way!" said the fortune, written in Chelsea's own careful cursive.

She had thought "No way!" was a pretty funny answer when she had written it there, but now she was annoyed. Oh, well. As her mother said, the fortuneteller was just pretend; it didn't really know anything. Quickly she tried for another answer. Y-E-L-L-O-W. Number: six. Number: one. Fortune: Definitely. That was more like it.

The music ended, and the minister, tall in his flowing robes, stepped up to the pulpit.

Chelsea loved Reverend Waller. He was old, but not too old, with thick white hair framing his wise, kindly face. Even though Chelsea knew God wasn't a person, in a body, with a robe on, she still thought Reverend Waller looked like God.

"Good morning!" Reverend Waller said.

"Good morning!" the people in the pews replied.

Then Reverend Waller told everybody to stand up and greet the folks around them. Near Chelsea's family sat Danny's parents and his two older brothers. Danny's brothers shook hands with Chelsea's parents. Chelsea glared at Danny. He glared back at her. Chelsea supposed that counted as greeting each other.

When everyone was sitting down again, Chelsea slipped out of the pew and hurried to the back of the church to get ready for her big moment as acolyte. While Reverend Waller made his announcements, Chelsea imagined herself walking down the aisle in solitary splendor.

On a table in the back of the church, Chelsea found another copy of the bulletin. This one hadn't been folded into a fortune-teller with the Unison Prayer cut off. She checked the opening hymn; it was one of her favorites, "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling."

When Reverend Waller stopped talking, the organist began playing the opening bars of the hymn. One of the ushers, Mr. Cruz, handed Chelsea a long brass candlelighter and lit the wick for her. Mr. Cruz was Chelsea's favorite usher. He was an older man, with thick gray hair and bushy gray eyebrows and a kind, sad smile. The smile was sad because his wife, who sometimes sang solos in the choir, was sick with cancer.

Chelsea stood up extra-straight and tried to put a holy expression on her face, to look as much like an angel as she could. In time with the music, she started down the long center aisle.

"Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven, to earth come down."

Chelsea didn't sing, even though she knew the words by heart. She didn't glance to the left or to the right, to see if the old ladies were smiling at her and noticing how much better an acolyte she was than Danny Repetti had been last Sunday. She gazed straight ahead at her candlelighter.

That was when she noticed that the flame had gone out.

She closed her eyes for a fleeting second, then opened them and checked again. The flame was definitely out. There was no flicker, no spark, no wisp of smoke, nothing at all.

Chelsea froze in place. She couldn't keep walking down the aisle with an unlit candlelighter. It would be too ridiculous. What would she do when she got to the altar? Pretend to light the candles?

But she couldn't turn back. She had never seen any other acolyte turn back halfway through the opening hymn. It would spoil the whole effect. It would spoil everything.

She couldn't just stand there, in the middle of the aisle, either. The congregation was already up to the second verse: "Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast!"

If only the Holy Spirit could breathe one little flame into Chelsea's one little wick!

She saw her mother and father, twisting around in their pew to smile at her. In what she hoped would be a secret code, she gave a quick, desperate nod at her candlelighter, so that her mother alone would see what was wrong. Her mom mouthed something at her, but Chelsea couldn't tell what it was. Come on? Turn back?

Turning back was the best of her bad options. Willing herself to be invisible, she spun around and walked as briskly as she could to the back of the sanctuary. The faster she went, the less time anyone would have to see her. Mr. Cruz, obviously trying not to smile, lit her candlelighter again. It had better stay lit this time.

"Come, Almighty, to deliver ..."

Chelsea started down the aisle again. Desperate this time, she tried to make herself even more angel-like than before, her steps more stately and majestic, her thoughts more firmly fixed on the golden cross hanging over the altar. She glanced at her flame: thank goodness, it was still there.

She heard some stifled laughter. It sounded like Danny Repetti. Chelsea forced herself not to burst into tears, drop the candlelighter, flame and all, and flee to the parking lot. She managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Finally, as the last stanza was beginning, she reached the altar. Standing at the pulpit, Reverend Waller smiled down at her. His smile said, "You are an amazing acolyte, Chelsea Garing, with great courage and presence of mind! How fortunate we were that you were the acolyte on this day when disaster struck!"

Chelsea smiled back at him. He made her feel that the fortune-teller had been wrong the first time, and she had done a wonderful job as acolyte, after all. She loved him more than ever.

With trembling hands, she lit first one candle, then the other, and turned to retrace her steps.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Danny grinning at her, cross-eyed, as she marched toward him on her way back up the center aisle. "Saint Chelsea," he hissed at her.

Chelsea knew he meant the nickname for an insult. She decided to take it for a compliment. Her head held even higher, her "halo" even brighter, Chelsea marched on past Danny Repetti, ignoring him completely.

CHAPTER 2

The Good Samaritan

"All right, boys and girls!" Mrs. Taylor called to the class one crisp Sunday morning in October. Mrs. Taylor was Chelsea's Sunday school teacher. Her voice was always a little too loud and hearty, as if she was trying to convince the children that the activities she had planned for that day were going to be extra-special, super-duper fun. "Today we are going to be acting out the story of the Good Samaritan!"

The other five children in the class, who had been pelting each other with beanbags from the toy box, sat down in their seats around the table. Chelsea was already seated there. She had been helping Mrs. Taylor put the caps back on all the marker pens in the crafts box. It was so satisfying to find an orange marker without a cap and an orange cap without a marker and put them together again.

Now she turned her thoughts to the play. She tried to remember what she knew about the Good Samaritan. He had rescued some man from a ditch, and Jesus had told everyone to be like him. When Mrs. Taylor was choosing the cast, Chelsea would ask to be the Good Samaritan.

"One day a man was walking down the road to Jericho," Mrs. Taylor began. She took out her big map of Bible-time places and pointed to the city of Jericho. "Who would like to be the man in our play?"

Was the man the Good Samaritan? Chelsea wasn't sure. But all the others were waving their hands, so Chelsea took a chance and raised hers, too.

Maybe because she had worked so hard on the markers, Mrs. Taylor picked her. "Chelsea, you may be the man. Danny, from now on, please don't wave your hand in front of other people's faces. Does anyone know what happens next?"

Chelsea didn't. But sooner or later she was bound to rescue the man, and then Jesus would appear and say to all the other people hanging around, "Go, and do likewise," meaning, "Go, and be like Chelsea."

The problem, whenever they acted out Bible stories, was who would play Jesus. Chelsea especially hated when Danny did. But it seemed wrong for any of them to pretend to be Jesus. Only Reverend Waller was good enough, in Chelsea's opinion, to play that part.

"As the man was walking down the road," Mrs. Taylor continued in her overly enthusiastic, Bible-story voice, "some thieves jumped on him and robbed him and left him bleeding in a ditch."

Uh-oh. Chelsea felt the color draining from her face. She had made a terrible mistake. She wasn't going to be the Good Samaritan. She was going to be the man in the ditch. Was it too late to tell Mrs. Taylor that she didn't want to be the man walking down the road, after all?

"Of course, we won't really jump on Chelsea and knock her down," Mrs. Taylor said, smiling at Chelsea reassuringly. Chelsea forced herself to give a half-smile in return. "We're just going to pretend. I need two people to be our thieves."

Once again, all the other hands were waving frantically in the air. Only Chelsea's hand, guilt-stricken at the mistake it had made, lay limp and listless in her lap.

Mrs. Taylor hesitated. "All right, Danny, you may be one, and thank you for waving your hand so nicely this time. Amanda, you may be our other thief. Pretend thief," she added, smiling at Chelsea again.

Amanda was the only other girl in the fourth-grade Sunday school class. Chelsea liked her better than any of the boys, but not as much as she liked her best friend at school, Naomi. Naomi was Jewish. She went to her own religious class at the synagogue two blocks away.

Chelsea wondered if Naomi ever acted out Old Testament stories in her class. Naomi was stronger and braver than Chelsea. If two pretend thieves tried to jump on Naomi and leave her bleeding in a ditch, they'd be the ones who ended up in the ditch when Naomi was done.

"Then a priest walked by, and he saw the man in the ditch, but he didn't stop to help. He passed by on the other side of the road." Mrs. Taylor's face wore a sorrowful expression here. Clearly she had expected more of a priest.

"And then a Levite — that's like a priest — came along, and he saw the man in the ditch, and he didn't stop to help, either. He also passed by on the other side of the road. Who wants to be the priest and the Levite?"

The remaining three all put up their hands. Chelsea stared at them. Didn't they realize that the next part, the last part, was going to be the best part, the part of the Good Samaritan? These kids would raise their hands for anything.

Of course, Chelsea had done the same thing. That was how she had gotten stuck with the part of the man in the ditch in the first place.

Travis was chosen to be the priest, and Justin the Levite. Angus, the only one left now, looked disappointed.

"And then," Mrs. Taylor said, giving an extra-big smile to Angus, "a Samaritan came along. Now, this man was not from the same country as the wounded man. He was from the country of Samaria." Mrs. Taylor pointed to the Bible-time map again. "The Samaritans and the wounded man were enemies."

Angus perked up. "So does the Samaritan jump on the guy in the ditch and beat him up some more?" he asked hopefully.

"No, Angus. This is the story of the Good Samaritan."

Angus's face fell again.

"Angus, as our Good Samaritan, you help Chelsea. You bandage her wounds and put her on your horse and take her to a nearby inn."

"Do I have to?" Angus asked.

Chelsea had been thinking the same thing. Almost as bad as being pushed into a ditch by Danny would be having her wounds bandaged by Angus. It was certain to tickle, and Chelsea was extremely ticklish. And what would they use for the horse?

"Can I be the horse?" Danny asked, not even bothering to wave his hand this time.

Mrs. Taylor frowned uncertainly. Chelsea knew that Mrs. Taylor hated to dampen any enthusiasm shown by the boys in Sunday school. But Chelsea also knew Danny's idea of a horse would be a bucking bronco at a cowboy rodeo.

"All right, Danny," Mrs. Taylor said, replacing her frown with a too-cheerful smile.

"Can we wear costumes?" Amanda asked.

"What a good idea!" Mrs. Taylor exclaimed.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Chelsea's classmates were tearing into the boxes of costumes from the Christmas pageant, which were stored in the cupboard at the back of the Sunday school room.

Chelsea slowly joined them. She pulled a coarse brown tunic over her pink Sunday school dress. She draped a square of striped fabric over her head and tied a ragged strip of brown fabric around it to hold it in place.

"All right, actors," Mrs. Taylor said, "take your places."

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Perfectly Chelsea"
by .
Copyright © 2004 Claudia Mills.
Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Like an Angel,
The Good Samaritan,
Hanukkah Candles,
Straw for the Manger,
Make a Joyful Noise,
Prayer Time,
The Quarrel,
Easter Sunrise,
There Is a Season,
Also by Claudia Mills,
Copyright,

Editorial Reviews

Yes, nine-year-old Chelsea, whose family life revolves around church activities, is perfect most of the time. She prays to God to keep her perfect as the best acolyte, best Sunday School helper, and best good-deed-doer-but when her prayer for Mrs. Cruz doesn't keep her from dying, she has her first fight with God. Her Jewish friend Naomi is a foil for common fourth-grade encounters with school events, family traditions, and religious beliefs, as is her nemesis, klutzy Danny, who disrupts the youth bell choir and the church play about the Good Samaritan. Unusual for its focus on religion for this age, nevertheless the kids' behavior and questions about prayer and values ring fairly realistic. A nice touch at the end is when the beloved older minister leaves for a new church and is replaced by a woman. (Fiction. 7-10)

Kirkus Reviews