Starting School

by Johanna Hurwitz

  Starting School

  Johanna Hurwitz

  Text copyright © 2014, 1998 by Johanna Hurwitz

  Illustrations copyright © 2014, 1998 by Karen Dugan

  All rights reserved.

  Published by StarWalk Kids Media

  Except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and articles, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher. Contact:

  StarWalk Kids Media

  15 Cutter Mill Road, Suite 242

  Great Neck, NY 11021

  www.StarWalkKids.com

  ISBN 978-1-62334-995-0

  For my grandson Ethan Alexander Richardson. Welcome to the world!

  Special thanks to Mrs. Jeanette Beard and her kindergarten students at Monroe School in Janesville, Wisconsin, and to all the other kindergarten teachers and children I’ve met in the past few years. Also thanks to Fain Dolinsky for sharing family stories and for locating and mailing my computer disk to me when I went off on vacation and left it behind.

  CONTENTS

  1. The First Day

  2. Inside The Teachers’ Room

  3. Mrs. Greenstein’s Class

  4. “Is It Time For School?”

  5. Ms. Boscobel’s Class

  6. Back inside The Teachers’ Room

  7. Trading Places

  8. Who’s Who?

  9. Back in Place

  1

  THE FIRST DAY

  It was the first Wednesday of September. Two young boys were about to start school. The boys were named Marcus and Marius Cott. They were five years old, and they were identical twins.

  Even though they no longer dressed in matching clothes, the two brothers had exactly the same features, hair color, height, and weight. Mrs. Cott looked fondly at her two young sons during breakfast. “It’s a good thing you’re in different kindergarten classes,” she said. “It would be hard work for a teacher to tell you apart.”

  “I can tell us apart,” Marius responded at once. He looked across the table at his twin brother. “That’s Marcus,” he said, pointing.

  “That’s right,” agreed Marcus. “I’m me. And he’s not me. He’s Marius,” he added.

  “I want to be in the same class with Marcus,” Marius told his mother as he licked some bright red strawberry jam off his fingers. “We should be in the same kindergarten.”

  “And I want to be in Marius’s class,” said Marcus. One of his cheeks was shiny with butter. He didn’t like jam on his toast. “I want to be in Marius’s class,” Marcus said again. He had a habit of repeating himself.

  “You can’t be in the same class. That’s the school rule,” their big brother, Lucas, explained to the boys. “Brothers and sisters can’t be together. They won’t even let cousins be in the same classroom.” Lucas was in sixth grade, and he had been going to school since before the twins were born. He knew everything there was to know about Edison-Armstrong School.

  “It won’t be any fun if we’re not together,” said Marius. “We’re always together.”

  “Always,” Marcus echoed.

  “Your classrooms are just across the hall from each other,” Mrs. Cott explained. “And you’re only going to school for half a day. By noon, you’ll be together again and eating lunch right back here at this table.”

  “Good,” said Marius, temporarily distracted by the thought of the afternoon meal. “What’s for lunch?” he asked.

  “You haven’t finished breakfast yet,” said Lucas. “What do you care about lunch?”

  “It’s my stomach, and I care,” Marius replied.

  “Tomato soup,” said Mrs. Cott.

  “Good,” said Marius. These days, he only wanted to eat foods that were red.

  Marius was the younger of the twins by twelve minutes. He was outspoken, and so people who didn’t know the boys sometimes thought he was smarter. Usually, he was the leader in their games and mischief. Marcus, though quieter and more thoughtful, was equally bright.

  Marius suddenly put down his piece of toast and stood up. “Listen, Lucas. I remember all those words you taught us,” he said, putting his sticky hand across his chest.

  “Me too. Me too,” shouted Marcus when he saw what his twin was about to do. He jumped up and almost knocked over his glass of milk. Together the boys recited the words “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States . . .”

  “Stop, stop,” said their mother. “Save it until you get to school and you can tell your teacher. Sit down and finish your breakfasts. It’s getting late.”

  “Which teacher do I have?” Marcus asked. “Which teacher is mine?”

  Mrs. Cott looked at the letter she had received from the school. “Marcus Cott is in Ms. Boscobel’s class. Marius Cott is in Mrs. Greenstein’s class,” she read.

  “Boscobel. Boscobel,” Marcus repeated, memorizing the new name.

  “Mrs. Greenstein’s class?” said Lucas. “She teaches in the mouse room.”

  “Mouse room?” asked Mrs. Cott, puzzled by this news.

  “What’s the mouse room?” asked Marius excitedly.

  “There was a mouse in that room last year. Cricket knew someone who had a little sister in that class, and she saw it. Cricket told us all about it.”

  “I love mice,” said Marius. Perhaps kindergarten had even more to offer than he had realized.

  “That’s good, because the room smells like them,” said Lucas.

  “Smells like mice? I want mice in my classroom,” Marcus complained. “I love mice, too.”

  “I’m sure the school has gotten rid of the mice by now,” said Mrs. Cott. She reached over with a wet paper towel and wiped Marcus’s face. “Hurry up, fellows. Finish eating. You don’t want to be late on your first day of school.”

  “This is the first day of my last year at Edison-Armstrong School,” Lucas pointed out. He proudly put on the blue sash with the silver badge that showed he was a Safety Patrol monitor. It was his job to help students cross one of the streets near the school building. “I’ve got to run ahead, but I’ll look for you when you get to school,” he said to his brothers. He grinned at both boys. “You’ll knock ’em dead!” he predicted.

  Marcus watched enviously as Lucas ran off. He wished he was as big and smart as his older brother.

  “We’d better start moving, too,” Mrs. Cott said, and led the twins toward the bathroom. There she supervised as they washed their hands. She recombed their hair and checked that they both went to the toilet.

  Each of the boys had a new backpack. They had insisted they needed them. Didn’t Lucas go to school every day with one slung over his shoulder? Unfortunately, neither Marcus nor Marius could think of anything to put inside their backpacks. But that didn’t mean they were going to leave them at home.

  “I know what,” shouted Marius suddenly. Lucas always had books in his backpack. Marius ran to their bedroom and returned with a well-worn copy of Curious George.

  “I need to put something in my backpack, too,” shouted Marcus, and he ran upstairs to the bedroom.

  “Hurry,” called his mother. “We should have left the house by now.”

  “I’m coming,” Marcus called, but he was still going in the wrong direction.

  On the floor of the bedroom he shared with his twin brother was a deck of playing cards. He liked to put them in piles by number. And this morning when he first woke up he’d been doing just that. Marcus scooped up all the cards and stuffed them into their box. He’d bring the cards to school and show his new teacher that he could recite the numbers in order: one, two, three, four, and so on. He knew she’d admire how well he knew them all. On the other hand, Marcus wasn’t sure counting was quite as impressive as finding
a mouse in the classroom.

  As he slipped the deck of cards into his backpack, Marcus had a thought. He raced downstairs and asked Marius a question.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to catch the mouse in your classroom? If you do, you can bring it home inside your backpack so we can play with it together.”

  “I’ll catch the mouse,” Marius said confidently.

  “I wish I was going to be in the same room with you. Then we could look for the mouse together,” Marcus said sadly as the boys and their mother set off for school. “I could help you.”

  Even though they’d gone to a preschool program the year before, the twins realized that this was a big milestone in their lives. The preschool had a baby name: Happy Times Play School.

  The name Edison-Armstrong School sounded grown-up and important.

  “Come on, fellows, walk briskly,” their mother instructed. As they went, they saw other students on their way to school, too. A yellow school bus passed them on the street.

  “I wish we could take the school bus,” commented Marcus. “I wish we could take the school bus.”

  “We live too near the school for you to need a bus,” said Mrs. Cott. “Besides, walking is good exercise.”

  “Running is better,” said Marius, and he raced on ahead. Marcus ran to catch up with his twin.

  “Wait at the corner!” shrieked Mrs. Cott.

  The two boys halted and waited at the corner for their mother to reach them. Then together the three of them watched for the light to turn green.

  “We know the way to school,” said Marius as they walked along. “We could go to school alone, just like Lucas.”

  “Lucas is almost twelve years old,” his mother reminded him. “You’re still five.”

  “One, two, three, four, five!” shouted Marius.

  “Very good,” said Mrs. Cott.

  “Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,” Marcus added. “Eleven, twelve . . .”

  Suddenly Marius recognized a girl who was walking toward the school, too. She was in Lucas’s class.

  “Hello, Cricket,” said Mrs. Cott, greeting her. “I was sure you would be a Safety Patrol monitor like Lucas.”

  “I could have been a monitor. I would have been a monitor. In fact, I should have been a monitor,” said Cricket, her voice rising in displeasure. “But they made the selections for the Safety Patrol in the spring, when I still had a cast on my ankle. Do you remember that I broke my ankle last April?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Mrs. Cott. “I’m glad to see you’re just fine now.”

  “Mr. Herbertson, the principal, should have known I’d be okay by September,” said Cricket with disgust. “Hey,” she cried suddenly, looking down at her feet. “Stop that!”

  Both Marcus and Marius were squatting down on the ground and poking at her ankles.

  “What does a broken ankle look like?” Marius wanted to know.

  “Get up at once, boys,” said Mrs. Cott.

  “I feel sorry for their teacher,” said Cricket as the four of them continued toward the school.

  “They’re really lovely boys,” said Mrs. Cott, defending the twins.

  “I remember Lucas when he was in kindergarten. He was awful. And two Lucases would be even worse.”

  “Neither of these boys is Lucas,” said Mrs. Cott. “This is Marcus and this is Marius. And they each have their own personalities and their own kindergarten teachers.”

  “Well, at least Mr. Herbertson didn’t make a mistake by putting them both in the same classroom,” said Cricket. “I would never want to be in the same class with two brothers of Lucas Cott.”

  “So what,” said Marcus. And before he could repeat his words, his twin did it for him.

  “So what,” said Marius.

  By this time, they had arrived at the old brick building. There were hundreds of children and parents on the street outside the school.

  “Where’s Lucas? We didn’t see Lucas,” shouted Marcus.

  “I think his post is on the other side of the school,” said Mrs. Cott. “Tomorrow, if we get here earlier, we’ll go looking for him.”

  A loud bell rang, and suddenly the hundreds of voices cheered and moaned at the signal of the start of the new school year. “It’s time to go inside now,” said Mrs. Cott. “Enjoy sixth grade,” she called to Cricket.

  The older students lined up to enter the building. But the parents of the kindergarten children were expected to bring their youngsters inside the building on this first day of school. The two kindergarten classrooms were off on the right-hand wing of the building. Mrs. Cott took a hand of each of her sons and led them forward.

  “Oh, yuck. What do I smell?” asked Marcus. “What do I smell?”

  “You smell you,” said Marius to his twin.

  A man nearby was sweeping up some sawdust on the floor. He looked at Mrs. Cott and her sons and gave a shrug of his shoulders.

  “There seems to be a rule or something. Every year one of those kindergarten kids throws up on the first day,” he said.

  “These kindergarten kids are not going to do that,” said Mrs. Cott, looking anxiously at her sons.

  “Well, welcome to your first day at school,” the man greeted the boys. “My name is King,” he said to them. “George. I’m the new custodian here. I used to work at Thomas Jefferson School, but I was transferred when the other fellow who worked in this building retired.”

  “Hi, King George. I’m Marius,” said Marius.

  “I’m Marcus, King George.”

  “King George. Say, I like that,” said the custodian, standing a little taller as he went on with his work.

  “We’ll see you around,” said Mrs. Cott, and continued walking with her two boys toward the kindergarten rooms. Mrs. Greenstein stood at the doorway greeting her new students.

  “Which of you is in this class?” she asked, looking from one brother to the other.

  “This is Marius,” said Mrs. Cott, letting go of his hand.

  “Hello, Marius,” said Mrs. Greenstein with a broad smile. “Welcome to kindergarten.”

  “Did you see the mouse yet?” Marius asked his teacher.

  “Mouse? What mouse?” asked Mrs. Greenstein.

  “My brother said this is the mouse room. He said you have a mouse in here,” said Marius, looking into the room.

  “No mice. Just lots of other boys and girls for you to meet,” said Mrs. Greenstein, tucking a piece of her gray hair behind her ear.

  “Oh,” said Marius. He looked very disappointed, but he remembered Lucas’s words and sniffed the air.

  “It does smell like mice,” he said, and a look of anticipation returned to his face.

  “Good-bye, Marius,” said Mrs. Cott. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

  Marcus grabbed Marius’s arm. “Don’t forget to bring the mouse home,” he reminded his brother.

  “I won’t,” said Marius, yanking at his backpack.

  Reluctantly, Marcus followed his mother to Ms. Boscobel’s room. It was right across the hall, just as Mrs. Cott had told her son it would be.

  Marcus looked at his new teacher. She was prettier than Mrs. Greenstein, he thought as he let go of his mother’s hand. He put his hand across his heart and began reciting slowly, “I pledge allegiance to the flag . . .”

  Ms. Boscobel appeared very surprised.

  “His older brother taught him all the words,” Mrs. Cott explained to the teacher. “He said you needed to know the pledge if you were going to school.”

  “Don’t say it now,” said Ms. Boscobel, interrupting Marcus. “Later you can help me teach the other children,” she added.

  Marcus smiled proudly.

  Mrs. Cott turned to go, but her son ran back to his mother and grabbed her hand. “What are you going to do now?” he wanted to know.

  “I’m going home to clean up from breakfast and fix lunch,” she explained. “I’ll be back to pick you boys up before you know it.”

  “Okay,” said Marcus. “
Okay.” He looked through the door into his classroom, where the other children were sitting on a rug on the floor. He could also see the shelves of books and toys inside. He was sorry that Marius wasn’t there with him, but he thought his kindergarten class looked like it would be fun.

  2

  INSIDE THE

  TEACHERS' ROOM

  It was the first Wednesday of September. Two kindergarten teachers had just taught the first session of their new morning classes. The teachers were named Mrs. Lillian Greenstein and Ms. Josephine Boscobel, sometimes called Josie for short. Although Mrs. Greenstein had been teaching for twenty years and Ms. Boscobel was only in her second year as a teacher, they both had similar comments and complaints to make.

  “This morning was awful! It’s a good thing I only have one of those Cott twins in my classroom,” said Mrs. Greenstein, biting into the stalk of celery from her lunch. “I could never handle two of them. Despite all my years of teaching, I can barely manage one. Of course, they must have put the worst twin in my class since I’m a more experienced teacher.”

  “Don’t talk,” said Ms. Boscobel, who wasn’t referring to the fact that Mrs. Greenstein had been speaking with food in her mouth. “I may be a relatively new teacher, but I doubt that there will ever be another child like Marcus Cott. I’m sure he is by far the more difficult of the two. It’s only the first day of school and already he’s driving me crazy. For some reason, he repeats everything he says. He even repeated whatever I said. I thought I’d go bananas.”

  “That’s nothing,” said Mrs. Greenstein. “Do you know what Marius did?” she asked as she opened her container of strawberry-flavored yogurt. “He spent almost the entire morning crawling along the floor in the classroom. He couldn’t be distracted by any of the games or activities.”

  “At least he didn’t disrupt the rest of the class,” said Ms. Boscobel.

  Mrs. Greenstein swallowed a mouthful of yogurt. “But he did! He said his older brother told him that there was a mouse in my classroom last year. Before I knew it, half the children were crawling along on their hands and knees looking for a mouse hole.”