The Colossal Fossil Fiasco

by Michelle Houts

  Copyright © 2018 by Michelle Houts

  Illustrations copyright © 2018 Elizabeth Zechel

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are from the authors’ imaginations and are used fictitiously.

  Sky Pony Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Houts, Michelle, author. | Zechel, Elizabeth, illustrator.

  Title: The colossal fossil fiasco / Michelle Houts ; Illustrated by Elizabeth Zechel.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Sky Pony Press, Skyhorse Publishing, [2018] | Series: Lucy’s lab ; #3 | Summary: While her second-grade class is studying fossils, Lucy makes an important discovery but her classmate, Stewart, claims credit. |

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017043705 (print) | LCCN 2017057185 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781510710726 (eb) | ISBN 9781510710702 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN

  9781510710719 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781510710726 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Fossils—Fiction. | Honesty—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.H8235 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.H8235 Col 2018 (print) | DDC [E]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043705

  Cover illustration by Elizabeth Zechel

  Cover design by Kate Gartner

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  1. Snow Day

  2. Biographies

  3. The Lunch Table

  4. A Good Name

  5. Family Meeting

  6. Survey

  7. Fossil Failure

  8. Survey Says …

  9. The Data, Please

  10. Dig, Dip, Look, Plunk!

  11. A Colossal Fossil Fib

  12. Staying on the Handle

  13. Truth Be Told

  14. A Mammoth Decision

  Chapter One

  Snow Day

  “Look outside!” Thomas yells. “Hurry, Lucy!”

  He’s staring out of the living room window, still wearing his T. rex pajamas.

  “There’s no reason to hurry,” Dad tells Thomas. “I don’t think the snow is going away any time soon.”

  I walk over to the window and stand beside my little brother. My own flannel pajamas are warm and cozy, but I kind of wish they had feet like Thomas’s. My bare toes are cold, even on the living room carpet.

  Outside, the snow that fell overnight is blowing in crazy circles all around the yard. There’s a drift in front of the garage door with two tire tracks through it that mom’s car made when she left for work. I can’t wait to get outside and play!

  “Dad,” I ask, “do you think we’ll have—”

  The kitchen phone rings. Dad’s cell phone lights up at the very same moment.

  He grins. “There’s the robo call. Do you think we should answer?”

  “Dad!” I run for the phone on the kitchen counter.

  “Hello?”

  “This-is-a-mes-sage-from-Gran-ite-Cit-y-Schools,” the computer voice on the other end says. “The-Gran-ite-Cit-y-Schools-will-be-closed-to-day-due-to-in-clem-ent-weath-er. Thank-you.”

  “Thank you,” I tell the robo voice, and I hang up the phone. “Yes! It’s a snow day!”

  Thomas turns away from the window. “Why did a robot call us? To tell us it snowed?”

  Thomas is only four. There’s so much about life he doesn’t understand.

  “There isn’t really a robot, Thomas,” I explain. “It’s just an automatic phone call saying that I don’t have to go to school today!”

  “Do I have to go to school today?” Thomas asks. He’s not old enough for kindergarten, but he thinks the Wee Care Daycare Center is school. I look at Dad. I’m not sure if daycare has a robo-call system.

  “Your school is up and running. It’s business as usual for you, Thomas,” Dad says. My brother makes a grouchy face. “And for me. I’d better get to the business of plowing, or I’ll have some very unhappy customers.”

  Dad finishes his coffee and gathers extra gloves while Thomas goes upstairs to get dressed. Dad’s a landscaper all summer. That means he plants bushes and mows grass. In the winter, he shovels sidewalks and clears the snow from parking lots. I guess that makes him a land-scraper all winter!

  “I’ll drop you at the library before I take Thomas to daycare,” Dad says to me.

  Thank goodness we have an arrangement with Aunt Darian. I spend snow days at the library where she works. Cousin Cora and I will help her put books back on the shelves, and we’ll read in one of the study rooms, and we’ll go to the Talking Room where we can laugh out loud.

  “Why can’t I go to the library?” Thomas is back, and he’s wearing a winter hat that our grandma in Ohio knitted. It’s green and has dinosaur spikes down the back.

  Dad grins. “Because Granite City has strict rules about dinosaurs in the public library.”

  Chapter Two

  Biographies

  When I jump out of Dad’s truck in front of the library, Cora is there waiting to let me in the locked door. The library doesn’t actually open until 9:30, but I get special privileges, since I’m the niece of the children’s librarian.

  “Can you believe it?” Cora asks. “It’s our first snow day of second grade!”

  She’s using her normal voice, which is kind of loud and excited. That’s okay, since the library isn’t open.

  “Dad thinks the snow will all be melted by tomorrow, since the ground isn’t very cold yet,” I tell her, “so we better get outside soon.”

  “My mom says we have to stay inside the library until after lunch. Then we can go out.” Cora shrugs.

  That’s okay with me. I have a lot of research to do, and a whole morning in the library sounds perfect.

  “Where do you want to go first?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. Cora has always been wild about the Cindy Sparkles books. I can see why, too. Cora could have been the model for the covers. Cora and Cindy both have bouncy blonde hair. They both love pink and purple and everything they wear has to glitter, at least a little.

  “Biographies,” Cora answers.

  I think my eyes must bulge out of my head like the eyes of a grasshopper. “Biographies? Really?”

  “Yep,” says Cora. “Follow me!” She twirls in her hot pink skirt and skips along in her hot pink ballet shoes toward the section where all the books have a capital B on the spine.

  I love biographies. Sometimes they are kind of thick, but most have words I can read—or figure out—with drawings or photos inside, and amazing true stories about real people. Sometimes, the people are even still alive!

  Cora walks down the rows. She runs a finger across the spines of all the books on the shelves along the way
.

  “Nope. Nope. Not that one. Nope. No. No. Nope.”

  “What are you looking for?” I ask. “Or, who are you looking for?”

  “No. No. No. Nope.” Cora comes back my way, her finger one shelf higher now. She’s so into finding a book, she’s not even listening to me.

  I decide to look around on my own. There’s a book about Neil Armstrong. I know he was the first man to walk on the moon. My teacher, Miss Flippo, told my class that. She knows a lot about outer space because she got to go there once. Most people don’t believe me when I tell them my teacher used to be an astronaut, but she really, truly was.

  On the shelf, there are biographies of presidents. There are biographies of presidents’ wives. (They are called First Ladies.) There are biographies of baseball players and swimmers and movie stars. They all look interesting, but what I’m looking for isn’t in the Biographies section. I have something else ticking at the back of my brain.

  “Cora, I’m going to the computers,” I say.

  “Nope. No. Not that one,” she answers. Her finger is now running along the books four shelves from the floor, and she has to stand on her tiptoes to reach.

  Wow, she’s really focused on finding that book. I can’t imagine who she wants to read about. I head to the computers to do some serious research.

  Luckily, Aunt Darian showed Cora and me how to find any library book using the online search catalog. Hmmm. I wonder if I should go remind Cora about that. No, when her finger gets tired of running along the edges of books, she’ll use the computer.

  In the search box, I type the words: perfect pets. The little circle spins around for a few seconds and then a long list of books comes up on the screen. I read some of the titles: How to Care for Aquarium Fish, Training Your New Puppy.

  I don’t need to know how to care for or train a pet if I don’t even know what kind of pet I want.

  I decide to change my search words: choosing a pet. Aha! Now, that’s better.

  Beside the computer, there are some scraps of paper and short little pencils. I write down the numbers and letters for the book I want and then I tiptoe over to the children’s nonfiction section. The library is open now, and people are coming inside, quietly stomping snow off their boots at the door.

  Last week, I heard Mom and Dad talking in the kitchen. I’m pretty sure they didn’t know I was there, because they got really quiet when I came into the room, and they started talking about when it might snow. But I know that’s not what they were talking about before. They were talking about getting another pet! We’ve had Sloan for a long time, and he’s the best dog ever, but everyone in my family loves animals, and I’ve been asking for another pet for a long, long time!

  If the Watkins family is getting a new pet, I need to research every pet in the world, so we get the best pet ever.

  I find the book I’m looking for, Choosing the Right Pet, just as Cora comes down the steps with a biography in her hand. She must have run out of “nopes” and found a “yep.”

  “What did you find?” I ask.

  Cora smiles and shows me the cover.

  “King Tut: Decorated Pharaoh,” I read. “Is that who you were looking for?”

  “Yep,” Cora answers.

  “King Tut and Cindy Sparkles are really, really different,” I say.

  “No, they’re not,” Cora insists. “King Tut was the first person to wear sequins.” She turns some pages in the book until she comes to a photo of tiny, metal sequins. They don’t have much shine to them anymore. And they look really old. “See? King Tut sparkled!”

  You can’t argue with that.

  Chapter Three

  The Lunch Table

  The next day, the sun is shining, but Dad was wrong about the snow melting quickly. There is still plenty of it stuck to the grass and trees. The roads are all clear, but I wait until the last minute to get out of my warm pajamas, just in case the robo-call comes.

  It doesn’t, so I almost miss the bus. Luckily, my bus driver, Mr. McHenry, blows the horn and waits for me to run down the sidewalk in my new, brown snow boots.

  Brown is my favorite color because all the best things in the world are brown: chocolate, mud, earthworms. My hair, and even Miss Flippo’s hair.

  Miss Flippo is the best teacher ever, and Room 2-C is the best classroom in all of Granite City Elementary School. Cora is in Room 2-C. And Natalie. And Georgia, who moved all the way from Alabama. And Ajay and Tessa. And—

  “Lucy Goosey!” I hear Stewart Swinefest’s voice as soon as my brown boots step off Bus 21. I decide to ignore him.

  “LUCY GOOSEY!” Stewart yells louder, so I turn around.

  “What do you want, Stewart?” I ask.

  Stewart is laughing, and so is Brody. Brody always laughs when Stewart laughs. “Nothing.” Stewart smirks. “Just wanted to see if you knew your name! LUCY GOOSEY!”

  I give Stewart a big eye-roll and walk away. Walking away from Stewart Swinefest is always a good decision.

  Mrs. James, our principal, is standing inside the big front doors.

  “Welcome back,” she says. “I hope you enjoyed your day off yesterday.”

  I smile at Mrs. James. I wonder what she does here at school all day long when we have a snow day. Does she just walk around in the halls all by herself? I would ask her, but I’m kind of in a hurry to get to Room 2-C.

  Miss Flippo greets everyone with a smile. I put my backpack on the hook below my name and on my way to my seat, I notice Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones is Miss Flippo’s favorite student. He never makes a sound. He stays perfectly still.

  He’s a skeleton.

  And today, for the very first time ever, Mr. Bones is wearing a red wool scarf around his neck. No, it’s actually around his clavicle. We learned that bone just last week when Ming flew off the swing at recess and fractured hers. Fractured, Miss Flippo said, means cracked, but not broken. Not only is Mr. Bones wearing a scarf around his clavicle, but he also has a pair of red mittens covering his long, boney hands.

  I start to laugh, and Cora says, “Hey, Lucy. What’s so funny?”

  “Mr.—”

  Miss Flippo claps three times, and I know that means to be quiet.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I whisper to Cora.

  Miss Flippo tells us about what she’s planned for our day.

  “We have extra work to do because school was closed yesterday,” she says. Everyone groans about the extra work, but Miss Flippo says she’ll open up the Science Lab right after lunch if we have a productive morning. Productive is what we are when we get a lot done.

  At lunch, I decide to take a survey. Miss Flippo takes surveys all the time. Surveys are when you ask the same question to a whole bunch of people and then you study their answers. There are six people at my lunch table: Natalie, Carl, Logan, Cora, Ming, and me. Ming has her right arm in a black sling that is supposed to hold her shoulder still so her clavicle can get better. I guess six is enough for a survey.

  “Okay, listen, everyone,” I say, “I’m doing research about pets.”

  Logan says, “I’m allergic to pets.”

  “You can’t be allergic to every kind of pet,” Ming insists.

  “I am. I’m allergic to their hair.”

  “Well, insects don’t have hair,” Carl says, “so you could have a pet beetle. Or a grasshopper.”

  “Insects are boring.” Logan shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t think I’m much of a pet person, anyway.”

  “Well, I am,” I reply. “And I think my parents are going to let us get a new pet very soon.”

  “Oh!” Cora jumps up. She’s so excited, she almost tips over her Princess Purple Power lunch box. “Get a rabbit!”

  “Rabbits are nice,” Ming agrees.

  “They’re more than nice,” Cora says. “They’re fuzzy and so soft! And their little noses go—” Cora’s nose wiggles up and down really fast. Logan, who was taking a drink of milk through his straw, starts to laugh. I’m sure that milk is going to squi
rt out of his nose, but he swallows just in time.

  Mr. Farmer, our custodian, comes over and asks Cora to please sit back down. I’ll bet he’s glad Logan didn’t snort milk through his nose. Mr. Farmer has to clean up a lot of spilled milk every day.

  By the time the bell rings, I have one vote for a rabbit, one for a praying mantis (Carl, of course), one for a clownfish, one for a Great Dane, and one for no pet at all. I think I’m going to have to expand my research beyond my lunch table.

  Chapter Four

  A Good Name

  Back in Room 2-C, Miss Flippo stands in the front of the room and claps us all quiet.

  “I promised I would open the Science Lab this afternoon,” she says. “While you were at lunch, I prepared the lab with some new specimens for you to observe.”

  Everyone turns to the back of the room to see what Miss Flippo has put on the lab table, but it’s covered with a white cloth.

  “Hey!” Stewart Swinefest yells, even though Room 2-C has a rule about using inside voices. “Look at Mr. Bones!”

  I guess I was the only one who noticed Mr. Bones standing in the back of the room in his new red scarf and mittens earlier. Now the whole class is giggling and talking, and Miss Flippo has to clap us all quiet again.

  “Yes, Stewart.” Miss Flippo is smiling. “I’ve given Mr. Bones some winter accessories to match the snowy weather we had yesterday.” Then her smile turns to frown. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find a hat to match, though. I think his skull looks a bit chilly, don’t you?”

  Miss Flippo walks to the back of the room and stands beside the lab table. “Okay, scientists, can anyone guess what our new science unit is about?” she asks as she lifts the white cloth from the lab table.

  Since I sit in the front row, I am pretty far from the Science Lab. I stand up to see better. So do Logan, Carl, and Jack. It looks like there are a lot of rocks on the table.

  “Rocks?” Heather guesses.

  “You’re half right, Heather,” Miss Flippo explains as she holds up a flat gray stone. “These specimens are interesting because they have something in them.”