by Lisa Graff
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Who’s Who
A Genius with a Problem
Check Marks and Squeegees
Piranhas and Pet Stores
Very Ugly Hats
The Lemur at the Pool Party
Sophie Simon’s Encyclopedia of Things She Can’t Believe You Don’t Know Already
How to Make Madagascar Ground Boa Taffy
Questions for the Author
Copyright
To Melissa, a bona fide smarty-pants
Who’s Who
1. Sophie Simon: The smartest girl in the third grade (possibly the world)
2. Mr. and Mrs. Simon: Like to refer to their daughter as their “darling little sausage omelet”
3. Mr. St. Cupid: The dumbest teacher in all of Eisenberg Elementary (possibly the world)
4. Owen Luu: Likes things clean, quiet, and bland
5. Mrs. Luu: Likes things chaotic, loud, and spicy
6. Daisy Pete: Give her an inch, and she’ll trip all over it
7. Mr. and Mrs. Pete: Own Petes’ Pet Store. Want their daughter to be a star ballerina
8. Madame Robespierre: Teaches ballet with an iron fist
9. Julia McGreevy: Wants to be a famous journalist when she grows up. Wants to be a mathlete never
10. Professor McGreevy: Can’t stop talking about math
11. Lenny the Lemur: A ring-tailed lemur
A Genius with a Problem
Every morning as they walked to the bus stop, Sophie Simon and her parents had the same conversation.
“Have fun at school today, lamb chop,” her mother would say, straightening out Sophie’s blouse.
And Sophie would wrinkle her cute button nose at her mother and tell her, “School is not for fun. It’s for learning.”
But that Friday morning, instead of simply patting Sophie on the head and nodding, Sophie’s parents did something that surprised her.
“Snickerdoodle,” Sophie’s father replied, “your mother and I have been thinking. Perhaps today you might try to make some friends.”
Sophie tugged at the straps of her backpack. “No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t need friends.”
“But, walnut,” Sophie’s mother said, taking hold of her hand as they crossed the street. “Don’t you even want one or two friends? All of the other children seem to have them.”
“That’s true,” said Sophie’s father.
Sophie scowled at her parents.
She was not like other children.
Sophie Simon was a genius.
By the time Sophie Simon was two, she could recite the alphabet backwards and forwards. The Russian alphabet.
By the time she was four, Sophie had dismantled her parents’ broken toaster and turned it into a working radio.
And at the age of seven, Sophie had successfully performed open-heart surgery on an earthworm in the front yard.
Since earthworms have five hearts each, this was a pretty difficult task.
You would think that having a genius for a daughter would have made Sophie’s parents delighted.
It did not.
Aileen and Maxwell Simon worried that their daughter wasn’t “well-adjusted.”
They were always quoting the famed child expert Doctor Wanda, who told parents on her TV show that the worst thing they could do was push their children to grow up too quickly.
To Sophie’s parents, growing up too quickly meant doing anything Sophie found interesting.
If Sophie crafted a working robot out of toothpicks and rubber bands, her parents sighed and told her that well-adjusted children made birdhouses.
If Sophie taught herself to speak Japanese from a textbook, her parents shook their heads and said that well-adjusted children spoke pig Latin.
And if Sophie composed her own concerto on the neighbor’s grand piano, her parents rubbed their temples and complained that well-adjusted children played the kazoo.
Sometimes Sophie wondered if maybe her parents weren’t really her parents. Maybe, Sophie thought, she had been switched with another baby in the hospital. A well-adjusted baby. Maybe her real parents were out in the world somewhere right now, wondering why their daughter wanted to play with dolls instead of encyclopedias.
But really, Sophie knew that the people who walked her to the bus stop every morning were her real parents. Because Sophie had her mother’s wavy hair, blond like straw. And she had her father’s blue eyes, and the same curvy earlobes. So she most definitely had not been switched at birth.
Too bad.
“Gumdrop,” Sophie’s father said as they reached the bus stop. They were the first ones there, as usual. “Isn’t that nice boy from your class having a birthday party this Sunday?”
“Why, yes,” Sophie’s mother said. “That charming little boy we met at parents’ night. Owen Luu. The one who was afraid of paste. He seemed extremely well-adjusted.”
Sophie rolled her eyes.
If Owen Luu was well-adjusted, then she was the president of Finland.
“That’s the one,” Sophie’s father said. “An invitation for the party came in the mail last week. Wouldn’t you like to go, marshmallow? It’s going to be a ‘birthday pool-party extravaganza.’ There will be an eight-layer ice cream cake, a high-dive contest, and an old-fashioned taffy pull.”
“Oh, peanut, doesn’t that sound delightful?” her mother exclaimed. “It would be a perfect opportunity to make friends.”
Sophie didn’t answer. She had never been to a birthday party, and she never wanted to go to one, either. And she certainly didn’t want any friends. Sophie knew for a fact that she didn’t need friends.
Friends did things like hang from the monkey bars and trade stickers.
Friends told each other secrets and laughed at silly jokes.
Having friends sounded like a waste of time.
“You know,” Sophie said, trying to change the subject, “you really don’t have to walk me to the bus stop anymore. I’m old enough to come by myself.”
“Oh, bean sprout!” her mother said. “We could never let you walk all this way by yourself!”
“It’s three whole blocks!” her father agreed. “What if you got lost?”
At dinner the night before, Sophie had built a topographic map of Zimbabwe out of her mashed potatoes. She would not have gotten lost.
“Here, dumpling,” her mother said. “I made some cupcakes for your lunch. Let me put them in your backpack.” She tugged at Sophie’s zipper.
“Mom,” Sophie said, “I’ve told you. I don’t like cupcakes.”
Sophie’s favorite dessert was flan, a Mexican custard that her parents said looked like refrigerated cat food.
“Don’t be silly, graham cracker!” her mother said as she opened Sophie’s backpack. “All well-adjusted children like cup—”
She did not finish her sentence.
“Sophie!” she screeched, her head halfway inside the backpack.
“What?” Sophie’s father asked. “What is it?”
“Oh, Maxwell, you won’t believe what I found in our daughter’s bag! It’s a…” She pulled out the object, and her husband snatched it from her.
“No!” he gasped.
“Yes!” Sophie’s mother cried.
“It’s a textbook!”
“A college tex
tbook!”
“Mom,” Sophie said. “Dad. I—” But she didn’t get a chance to explain.
“Advanced Concepts in Modern Calculus,” her father read. “Oh, Aileen, just imagine! Our well-adjusted daughter, exposed to this … educational material! The kind of stuff most adults don’t understand!”
Sophie’s mother put a hand on his shoulder. “Now, Maxwell, calm down. We don’t even know if this book belongs to Sophie. Someone could have slipped it into her bag without her noticing. Let’s give her a chance to explain before we get so worked up.” She turned to Sophie. “Sugarplum?”
Sophie shrugged. “I just wanted to look at it on the bus,” she said. “That’s all.”
Sophie’s mother sucked in her breath. “Sophie!” she cried. “All this time you promised you’d only spend your free time reading comic books!”
“May I have my book back?” Sophie asked. “I want to study before school starts.”
“Oh, Maxwell!” Sophie’s mother wailed, grabbing her husband’s arm. “Where did we go wrong?”
Sophie’s father was shaking his head. “You try so hard to be a good parent,” he said. “And then you find out your eight-year-old daughter is studying calculus.”
Sophie puffed out her cheeks.
Other children were beginning to join them at the bus stop.
“But calculus is interesting,” she tried to explain.
Sophie’s father pointed an angry finger at her. “Don’t you tell me calculus is interesting, young lady. I happen to know that calculus is not interesting. Calculus is math.”
Sophie’s father was right about one thing. Calculus was math. A very complicated kind of math. It involved long equations with letters and numbers and symbols so confusing that most people avoided looking at them directly, in case their brains turned to mush. There were graphs and charts and formulas and silly words like tangent.
Sophie loved it. She loved it more than any subject she’d ever studied before. Sophie loved calculus the way other children love roller coasters and trips to Disneyland.
She stayed up past midnight studying under the covers.
She thought about equations while her parents made her watch TV.
She even dreamed about calculus.
But there was one problem.
If Sophie really wanted to study calculus, really and truly, she needed a special kind of calculator.
“Mom? Dad?” Sophie asked as the Number 17 bus appeared over the hill in the distance. “Will you buy me a graphing calculator? I want the Pembo Q-60. It’s the latest model. It costs one hundred dollars.”
There was a pause.
A very short pause.
And in that pause, Sophie imagined what it might be like to have parents who understood her.
Parents who said, “Yes, dear, of course you may have a graphing calculator. Would you like a new set of notebooks and some fresh pencils to go along with it?”
Parents who let her study in peace and stopped bothering her about pointless things, like making friends.
But then the pause ended.
“Oh, Maxwell!” Sophie’s mother sobbed. “What would Doctor Wanda say?”
Sophie’s father shook his head. “You try so hard to be a good parent,” he said with a sniffle. “And then your eight-year-old daughter tells you she wants a calculator.”
Sophie heaved a deep sigh.
“So you won’t buy me a Pembo Q-60 then?” she asked.
“No,” said her mother.
“Absolutely not,” said her father.
The bus slowed to a stop at the corner.
“May I at least have my book back?” Sophie wondered.
“No,” said her mother.
“Absolutely not,” said her father.
“But it’s from the library!” Sophie protested. “I have to return it.”
“Oh, Maxwell!” Sophie’s mother wailed. “Our little girl’s been visiting the library!”
Sophie’s father shook his head. “You try so hard to be a good parent…” he began.
But Sophie didn’t hear the rest. The second the bus doors squeaked open, she leaped up the steps and plopped herself into the first empty seat.
As the bus pulled away from the corner, Sophie watched her parents’ faces grow smaller and smaller, weeping as they clutched her calculus book. When they had finally become specks in the distance and then disappeared, she turned around and thought.
There had to be some way to get that calculator.
But how?
* * *
Sophie Simon didn’t know it, but at that very moment, there were three other third-graders on the Number 17 bus who were puzzling over problems of their own.
Doozies.
Dilemmas.
Submarine-size pickles.
It would have taken a genius to solve all four problems.
Too bad Sophie Simon only cared about one of them.
Check Marks and Squeegees
Daisy Pete sat at her desk in Mr. St. Cupid’s third-grade class, tapping her pencil and staring at the list of rules on the wall.
There were lots of rules in Mr. St. Cupid’s class.
There were normal ones.
No pushing
No hitting
No chewing gum
And strange ones.
No choking
No wearing orange socks
No talking about fungus
Whenever anybody did something Mr. St. Cupid didn’t like, the teacher would add a new rule to his list.
So far the list of rules covered nineteen sheets of poster board and spread across three walls.
As Daisy stared at the list, the pencil she was tapping on her desk flew out of her hand and straight up into the air.
It landed—ker-PLUNK!—on the head of the girl who sat in front of her.
Sophie Simon.
Sophie was so busy reading the book she had hidden under her desk, she didn’t even notice the pencil sticking out of her blond ponytail.
Daisy thought Sophie Simon was a little odd. All she ever did was read. And trying to talk to her was like riding a bicycle upside down.
It didn’t make any sense.
No wonder Sophie Simon didn’t have any friends.
Daisy leaned forward and plucked her pencil out of Sophie’s hair. Luckily, Mr. St. Cupid didn’t notice. If he had, she would have gotten in trouble for breaking Rule number 138:
No pulling objects out of other students’ heads
Daisy did not want to get in trouble.
Every time you broke a rule in Mr. St. Cupid’s class, you got a check mark next to your name on the board.
If you got three check marks, you had to stay inside for final recess and clean the windows.
Daisy hadn’t been outside for final recess once all year.
Daisy never broke rules on purpose. But she seemed to be especially good at getting into trouble in Mr. St. Cupid’s class.
In fact, Daisy was responsible for creating thirty-six of the rules on Mr. St. Cupid’s wall, including:
No spilling glitter on the rug
No falling over in your desk
No dropping your science book on your foot
No tripping over your science book
No tripping over your backpack
No tripping over your shoelaces
NO TRIPPING
Daisy Pete had a lot of problems when it came to tripping.
But somehow, that Friday afternoon, Daisy only had two check marks next to her name. If she could make it through the rest of math time without breaking any more rules, she would finally get to go outside for final recess.
Daisy wondered what it was like out there. She’d heard rumors there were ice cream sundaes and dodgeball.
She was pretty sure the dodgeball part was true, at least.
“If I had five onions,” Mr. St. Cupid bellowed at the class, “and I ate three, what would I be left with?”
No one raised a hand.
&n
bsp; No one ever raised a hand in Mr. St. Cupid’s class.
Daisy thought this was because Rule number 3 on the wall was
No moving your arms
Most days, Daisy thought Mr. St. Cupid’s rules were pretty stupid. But today, having rules didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Daisy could think of some good ones for her parents.
No yelling
No lecturing
And, most important,
No forcing your daughter to dance in a ballet recital
Daisy had been trying to get out of her ballet recital for weeks.
She told her parents that she hated ballet, and that her dance teacher was meaner than an angry werewolf.
She told them that the thought of falling over in front of hundreds of people at a dance recital made her want to spew her lunch all over her frilly pink tutu.
She told them that if they forced her to dance in the recital at the Middlebury Performing Arts Center on Saturday, it would be utterly unfair.
But did Daisy’s parents pay any attention when she told them those things?
They did not.
Daisy’s parents told her that she probably just had stage fright.
They told her that, when she got up onstage, she’d be a star.
They told her that, once she was a star, the world would be her oyster, and she wouldn’t be stuck working in a pet store all her life like they were.
Well, Daisy didn’t want any oysters. And she loved Petes’ Pet Store. She couldn’t imagine anything better than working there forever.
But when it came to ballet class, Daisy’s parents didn’t hear a single thing she said. It made Daisy feel absolutely powerless.
Sometimes Daisy wondered if maybe her parents weren’t really her parents. Maybe, Daisy thought, her real parents had been abducted by aliens just after she was born, and replaced with androids who didn’t understand that going to ballet class was worse than having your nose hairs yanked out with pliers. Maybe her real parents were up in a spaceship right now, watching their daughter as they orbited the earth, cringing every time she had to put on a leotard.
But really, Daisy knew that the people who bought her dance shoes and picked her up from class every Tuesday after school were her real parents. Because Daisy had seen lots of movies about aliens, and her parents didn’t do anything weird and alieny like drink mountains of sugar water or shoot lasers out of their eyeballs. So they most definitely had not been abducted.
