Read an Excerpt
My Weird School #3: Mrs. Roopy Is Loopy!
Chapter One
That Army Guy
My name is A.J. and I hate school.
If you ask me, they shouldn't teach kids how to read and write in school. They shouldn't teach math. They should teach kids how to do tricks on their bikes. That's what I want to learn! But my teacher, Miss Daisy, thinks reading and writing and math are really important for some reason.
Miss Daisy told us to write a story for homework and draw a picture to go with it. We read the stories out loud the next day in class.
Andrea Young, who thinks she knows everything, made up a story about a family of flowers who were sad because it was cloudy outside. Then the sun came out and the flowers got happy again.
It was a really dumb story, if you ask me. Flowers aren't happy or sad. They just sit there and do nothing. They don't even have families! But Miss Daisy kept telling Andrea how great the story was.
My story was about these giant man-eating monsters fighting on trick bikes in outer space until they were all dead. I drew cool pictures to go with it. Emily, this girl with red hair, said my story was scary. But Emily thinks everything is scary.
Miss Daisy said I had a good imagination, but she asked me if next time I could try to write a story that didn't have so much violence in it.
"What's violent about giant man-eating monsters fighting on trick bikes in outer space?" I asked. Everybody laughed even though I didn't say anything funny.
Andrea said maybe I could have the man-eating monsters make up at the end of the story and tell each other they were sorry.
"Monsters don't apologize!" I said. Everybody knows that. Andrea doesn't know anything about monsters.
We were arguing about it when all of a sudden some funny-looking guy marched into our classroom. He was all dressed up in a fancy army uniform. He had a white wig on his head and a sword in his hand.
"To be prepared for war is the best way to keep the peace!" the army guy said. Then he marched out of the classroom.
"Who was that?" asked my friend Michael, who never ties his shoes no matter how many times he trips over the laces.
"Beats me," I said.
"Was that Principal Klutz?" asked my other friend Ryan, who sits next to me in the third row.
"I don't know who it was," Miss Daisy said, "but he is heading for the library. We'd better go check it out! Okay, second graders. Single file!"
My Weird School #3: Mrs. Roopy Is Loopy!. Copyright © by Dan Gutman. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
