Piper Green and the Fairy Tree

by Ellen Potter

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 by Ellen Potter

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2015 by Qin Leng

  Excerpt from Piper Green and the Fairy Tree: Too Much Good Luck © 2015 by Ellen Potter; illustrations © 2015 by Qin Leng. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhousekids.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Potter, Ellen.

  Piper Green and the fairy tree / Ellen Potter ; Qin Leng. — First edition.

  pages cm. — ([Piper Green and the fairy tree ; 1])

  Summary: “Piper’s older brother leaves Peek-a-Boo Island and Piper refuses to take off his old earmuffs, no matter what! Things are going from bad to worse…until she discovers the Fairy Tree.” —Provided by publisher

  ISBN 978-0-553-49923-0 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-553-49924-7 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-553-49925-4 (ebook) — ISBN 978-0-553-49926-1 (pbk.)

  [1. Separation (Psychology)—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 3. Family life—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Islands—Fiction.] I. Leng, Qin, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.P8518Pip 2015

  [E]—dc23

  2014025814

  eBook ISBN 9780553499254

  The illustrations were created using ink and digital painting.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1_r1

  ep+a

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter One: The Important Stuff

  Chapter Two: Everyone Loves Monkeys

  Chapter Three: Glunkey and Jibs

  Chapter Four: Princess Arabella

  Chapter Five: Piper Green (Proper Noun)

  Chapter Six: Bowling-Ball Head

  Chapter Seven: Good Riddance to Second Grade

  Chapter Eight: Mrs. Pennypocket

  Chapter Nine: The Fairy Tree

  Chapter Ten: Special Delivery!

  Excerpt from Piper Green and the Fairy Tree: Too Much Good Luck

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  For Alice Tasman, who is as wise as Mrs. Pennypocket, as kind as Mr. Grindle, and as wonderful as a Fairy Tree in your front yard!

  –E.P.

  For Mitchy, and that summer of cats.

  –Q.L.

  Detail left

  Detail right

  THE IMPORTANT STUFF

  There are two things you should know about Peek-a-Boo Island:

  1. All the kids on the island ride a lobster boat to school.

  2. There is a Fairy Tree in my front yard.

  I have a lot of other things to tell you too. My brother Erik says I should start with the most important stuff, though. He is fourteen and very smart.

  If you don’t like lobster boats or Fairy Trees, you should probably do something else. For example, you can go outside now and look for beetles. My little brother, Leo, likes to do that. He only eats the green ones. He says they taste like bacon.

  EVERYONE LOVES MONKEYS

  It was the first day of school. When I sat down at the table to eat breakfast, I was wearing my new orange shirt and a pair of white shorts. Also, I was wearing earmuffs. They were green and each muff had a monkey face on it.

  “Piper,” Mom said, “why are you wearing Erik’s old earmuffs?”

  “I just feel like it.”

  Leo kept staring at me as I ate. Then he said, “When are you going to take that thing off your head?”

  “Never,” I said.

  “Well, you can’t sleep with earmuffs on,” Leo said. He’s a year younger than me, but he’s sort of bossy.

  “Oh, yes I can.”

  “How are you going to take a shower?” he asked.

  I thought about it.

  “I’ll take baths,” I said.

  “Who’s going to want to be friends with a kid who wears monkey earmuffs all the time?” he asked.

  “People who love monkeys,” I told him. “Which is everyone.”

  I tried not to look over at the empty chair. It’s the chair that Erik usually sits in. But my eyes have a mind of their own. They peeked.

  It was the saddest-looking empty chair I had ever seen.

  “Let’s get a move on, you two,” Mom said. “The boat won’t wait for you if you’re late.”

  She had our book bags ready for us by the door. Our life jackets were there too. Mine is an ugly old orange one. Allie O’Malley has a beautiful pink one with white polka dots all over it.

  We grabbed our stuff. Mom gave us each a kiss. Then she knelt down next to me and looked me right in the eyeballs.

  “You’ll have to take the earmuffs off if Ms. Gibbs tells you to,” she said.

  “Oh, Ms. Gibbs only minds if you talk too much or if you put glue sticks up your nose. She doesn’t care about kids wearing earmuffs.”

  I wasn’t 100 percent sure about this.

  But I hoped it was true.

  GLUNKEY AND JIBS

  At the Peek-a-Boo Island harbor, Mr. Grindle was standing on the wharf next to the Maddie Rose. The Maddie Rose is Mr. Grindle’s lobster boat. Mr. Grindle takes us to school every day. Since only eight kids live on Peek-a-Boo Island, we don’t have our own school. That’s why we have to ride the Maddie Rose to the school on Mink Island.

  “Good morning!” Mr. Grindle said to us with a big smile. “How’s the wife and kids, Leo?”

  “Doing just fine, Mr. Grindle,” Leo said.

  Leo tells everyone that he is married. His wife is named Michelle and she is a piece of paper. Their children are three yellow Post-it notes that he stuck on Michelle.

  “Glad to hear it,” Mr. Grindle said, and he patted Leo on the back. Then he looked at me. He squinched his eyes and tipped his head.

  “Do you know you have an awful lot of green hair growing out of your ears?” he said to me.

  “They’re Erik’s old earmuffs,” I told him. “He gave them to me before he left.”

  “Ahh.” Mr. Grindle nodded. His face was serious. “Today is a good day for earmuffs. They will keep the wind out of your ears.”

  Leo and I went on board the Maddie Rose. The first thing we did was go inside the wheelhouse. That is the little cabin where Mr. Grindle steers the boat. Most of the kids were already in there. They were sitting on the bench, munching on doughnuts and talking. Allie O’Malley was there too. She was not wearing her pink life jacket with the white polka dots. She had on a brand-new one. This one was purple and had mermaids swimming all over it.

  “Piper, what on earth is on your head?” Allie O’Malley asked.

  She talks just like someone’s grandmother.

  “It’s a baked potato,” I said.

  “No it’s not,” Allie said, frowning. “It’s earmuffs,
with squirrel faces on them.”

  “FYI, they’re not squirrels,” I said. “They’re monkeys.”

  “Well, it’s not winter, so you look silly,” Allie said.

  “Yeah, well, you know what you look like?” I said. “You look like Bert and Ernie.”

  “That makes no sense. I can’t look like both of them,” Allie said. “Plus, I don’t look like either of them.”

  It’s true. She doesn’t. She’s really, really pretty.

  On the wheelhouse floor was Mrs. Grindle’s basket full of goodies. She owns the bakery on Peek-a-Boo Island. Every morning, she gives Mr. Grindle a basket of something she has baked for all us kids to eat on the way to school. Today, it was doughnuts with powdered sugar on top.

  I took a doughnut and went out on the deck. Leo stayed inside with the other kids. Most of them like to ride inside the wheelhouse. Erik and I always rode outside, on the deck, unless it was raining. We loved to watch the water sparkle and to count the lobster buoys. Sometimes we’d spot a seal swimming. Once we even saw a whale.

  Without Erik, it wasn’t going to be much fun on the deck anymore.

  Jacob was out there, too, eating a doughnut.

  “Hi, Jacob,” I said.

  I sniffed him.

  “Hey, you don’t stink today!” I told him.

  “My mom rubbed lemons on my hands,” he said.

  Jacob’s father is a lobsterman, like my dad. Jacob wants to be a lobsterman, too, when he grows up. For now, though, he is the guy in charge of dead fish. All summer long, he goes on the boat with his dad and stuffs dead fish in bait bags to help catch lobsters. The only problem is, he smells like stinky dead fish all the time.

  Mr. Grindle started the motor. The lobster boat went blurble, blurble, blurble. The next minute, we began to motor out of the harbor.

  Jacob and I stared at the water for a while without saying anything.

  “Hey, Jacob,” I said finally. “See this fellow?” I tapped the monkey face on the right earmuff.

  Jacob looked and nodded.

  “I’m naming him Glunkey,” I told him.

  “Glunkey the Monkey,” Jacob said.

  “Exactly. And the other one”—I tapped the left earmuff—“I’m naming him Jibs. He can be annoying sometimes.”

  Jacob nodded again.

  He doesn’t say much, that’s for sure. Sometimes I wonder if Jacob’s just pretending to listen while he thinks about lobsters. But then other times, he listens so hard that he can hear things I’m only thinking in my brain.

  “Too bad Erik isn’t here to eat Mrs. Grindle’s doughnuts today,” Jacob said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I took in a deep breath, then sighed. “Too bad.”

  PRINCESS ARABELLA

  The Mink Island School is a little white building with a bell tower on the top. When I got there that morning, kids were already in the playground. I looked for Ruby. She is my best friend from Mink Island. I hadn’t seen her all summer because she went to visit her grandmother in New York City. I spotted her coming down the slide. She was wearing a pair of sunglasses that she had hot-glued rhinestones to. On her wrists were about a million homemade bracelets.

  I ran up to her, and we gave each other a hug.

  “Hi, Thing Number One,” I said to her.

  “Hi, Thing Number Two,” she said to me.

  That’s what Ruby’s dad calls us.

  “Hey,” Ruby said, “how come you’re wearing earmuffs?”

  “They’re monkeys,” I said. I turned my head so she could see Glunkey and Jibs. “Cute, right?”

  “O-kaaay,” she said. She gave me a funny look. Then she said, “Piper, see that princess lady over there?”

  She pointed to a lady by the stairs in front of the school.

  “Ooh, she does look like a princess!” I said.

  The lady had long golden hair that made waves all the way down her back. She wore a swishy light blue dress.

  “That’s our new teacher,” Ruby said.

  “No it’s not. Ms. Gibbs teaches the second-and-third-grade class.”

  Our school only has fifty kids in it, even though it goes all the way to the eighth grade. That’s why they squish grades together.

  Ruby shook her head. “Ms. Gibbs moved off of Mink Island. Now we have that princess lady.”

  I stared at the princess.

  She looked nice.

  She looked as if she had a tinkly voice.

  She looked like someone who wouldn’t care if I wore earmuffs in class.

  The school bell rang. Ruby put her arm through mine and we hurried inside. We wanted to get seats next to Nacho, the adorable little brown bunny. He is the class pet in the second-and-third-grade room. He’s much cuter than our classroom pets last year, which were two hermit crabs named Simon and The Other Simon. They were so boring that no one even bothered to think up two names for them.

  Lucky us! The seats next to Nacho were empty. We scooted into them very fast. We petted Nacho’s soft ears and rubbed the top of his head. Then Ruby and I started to make our Garth Shield. Garth is a kid who makes inappropriate noises all the time. And some of those noises do not come from his mouth. Ruby and I make a Garth Shield at the beginning of every school year. It really works too. We hold hands and close our eyes and whisper softly, “Be gone, Garth. Be gone, Garth.” And Garth always winds up sitting on the other side of the room.

  The princess lady came in. She stood in front of the classroom, holding a piece of paper.

  “Good morning, class,” she said. “My name is Ms. Arabella and I’ll be your new teacher.”

  Ms. Arabella! It even sounded like a princess name.

  Princess Arabella.

  I smiled at her. I wanted to show her that I was one of those friendly and helpful kinds of girls who also happened to wear earmuffs.

  “Don’t get too comfortable in your chairs, everyone,” said Ms. Arabella.

  Uh-oh.

  I was very comfortable.

  “I will be assigning seats,” Ms. Arabella told us.

  There was a roar of complaining voices about this.

  “Settle down!” said Ms. Arabella.

  She did not sound at all tinkly.

  Then she made us get up, and she told us where we had to sit for the rest of the year. She made Ruby sit next to Allie O’Malley. And guess where she put me? Right smack next to Garth! He looked at me and smiled. Then he belched, “I like cheese.”

  I was beginning to get a bad feeling about this princess.

  PIPER GREEN (PROPER NOUN)

  Ms. Arabella swished up and down the aisles and handed out paper and pencils.

  “This morning, we are going to make a class dictionary,” said Ms. Arabella. “We will write definitions of ourselves. It will help us to get to know each other better.”

  She turned around and wrote on the blackboard:

  Ms. Arabella (proper noun):

  1. Ms. Arabella is 5'6'' and has blond hair and green eyes.

  2. Ms. Arabella’s favorite things: painting, teaching, and eating lobster.

  I peeked over at Jacob. He looked at Ms. Arabella all lovey-eyed when she wrote “eating lobster.”

  “Okay,” said Ms. Arabella, “now it’s your turn, class. If you were in the dictionary, what would it say about you?”

  I wrote down:

  Piper Green (proper noun):

  1. Piper Green has blond hair. It used to be long, but it got chopped to smithereens by her mother, who should not be allowed to cut kids’ hair.

  I was thinking about my favorite things when I saw some swishing out of the corner of my eye. I looked up. Ms. Arabella was staring down at me.

  “Piper?” she said, reading my name on the paper.

  “Yes?”

  “Piper, earmuffs are not allowed in class,” said Ms. Arabella. “Please take them off and put them in your cubby.”

  “I can’t,” I told her.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  I thought about telli
ng her it was “none of her beeswax why not.” But I had a feeling that would not go over too well.

  “My ears feel naked without them,” I said.

  Everyone laughed because I said “naked.”

  Ms. Arabella’s face got pink.

  “I wouldn’t like to send you to the principal’s office on your first day of second grade,” Ms. Arabella said in her most un-tinkly voice.

  “I don’t think any of us would like that,” I agreed.

  We stared at each other.

  Those earmuffs stayed right on my head.

  “All right, Piper,” Ms. Arabella said, “you will stay in at recess. I will also send a little note home to your parents.” Then she swished away.

  I stared down at my paper. I told myself that I would not cry. But like I said, my eyes have a mind of their own. They started watering up. I wiped the tears away. Then I picked up my pencil and wrote:

  2. Piper Green’s favorite things: NOT SECOND GRADE!!

  BOWLING-BALL HEAD

  That night, Mom and Dad sat me down for a little talk. Except they were the only ones allowed to do the talking.

  “We know you love Erik’s earmuffs, Piper,” said Mom, “and we understand that you miss him. But you have to listen to your teacher.”

  Dad folded his arms across his chest. That’s what he does when he means business.

  “I think it’s time to take those things off your head, Piper,” Dad said.

  I started crying. I wasn’t faking either. Mom and Dad looked at each other. Then Dad said, “Okay, okay. You can wear them until you get to school tomorrow. The minute you walk into that classroom, though, off they come. Got it?”

  I nodded.

  But a little voice in my ear said, “That’s what they think.”