by Nancy Krulik
Table of Contents
Dedication
Copyright Page
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About the Author
For Orit, Kathie, and Cindy—the most
supportive mermaids I know—N. K.
For Michael—a big fish in our
little pond!—J&W
GROSSET & DUNLAP
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Text copyright © 2007 by Nancy Krulik. Illustrations copyright © 2007 by John
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2007007024
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Chapter 1
“Welcome to school,” Mr. Guthrie greeted Katie Carew as she walked into her classroom on Monday morning. “All fish travel in schools. This is right where you belong.”
“But I’m not a fish . . .” Katie started to say. Then she stopped herself. As she looked around she saw that her classroom had turned into some sort of underwater world.
Of course, Katie wasn’t really underwater. Mr. G. had just decorated the classroom to make it look like a giant aquarium. Her teacher was always doing things like that.
“Let me guess, we’re studying fish now,” Andy Epstein said.
“You’re a wise little guppy,” Mr. G. told him.
Katie looked around the room. Mr. G. sure had worked hard. The walls were lined with giant photographs of fish and coral. The floor was covered with a sea green carpet. There were fish-shaped balloons hanging from the ceiling.
Mr. G. had even surrounded Slinky’s cage with blue and green streamers. It looked as though Slinky were a sea snake, instead of a snake who was the class pet.
“Do we get to decorate our beanbags now?” Kevin Camilleri asked excitedly.
“You sure do, dude!” Mr. G. told him. “You’ll find everything you need in the art corner.”
Katie clapped her hands. Decorating her beanbag was always the most fun part of starting a new learning adventure. Mr. G. called all lessons learning adventures. And he called the kids dudes, instead of students. Mr. G. didn’t talk like other teachers.
He didn’t act like other teachers, either. All of the kids in Mr. G.’s class sat in beanbag chairs. Mr. G. thought kids learned better when they were comfortable. Katie definitely agreed. And the beanbags were just one of the cool things Mr. G. did for his students. He also let the kids play games, cook, and tell jokes in the classroom. It was never boring in class 4A.
Sometimes Katie felt sorry for the kids in class 4B. Their teacher, Ms. Sweet, was really nice. But she was no Mr. G.
“Hey, do you guys know which fish is the most valuable?” George Brennan asked.
“No, which?” George’s best pal, Kevin, asked.
“A goldfish,” George answered. He laughed really hard at his own joke.
The other kids laughed, too. Well, all the kids except Kadeem Carter. He wasn’t about to let George tell the only fish joke today.
“What do fish get when they graduate from school?” Kadeem asked the other kids.
“What?” Emma Stavros asked him.
“A deep-ploma!” Kadeem shouted out. “Get it? Deep water?”
The other kids laughed. But not George. Katie could tell George was trying to think of a joke to top Kadeem’s. All of a sudden he smiled in triumph.
“Yeah, I get it,” George said. “And now I’m throwing it back.”
“The laughs were too small to keep,” Kevin added.
“Now here’s a real joke,” George told the class. “What kind of fish goes best with peanut butter?”
“What kind?” Mandy Banks wondered.
“Jellyfish!” George exclaimed.
“Sounds like we’ve got a great joke-off going on here!” Mr. G. chuckled. “Kadeem, it’s your turn.”
Kadeem stopped taping a Styrofoam fish eye to his beanbag long enough to say, “What part of a fish weighs the most?”
“What part?” Andy asked him.
“The scales!” Kadeem joked.
Everyone laughed at that—even George.
“Good one,” Mr. G. chuckled. “Now finish up with your beanbags, everyone. I want to get started on this amazing learning adventure!”
The kids in class 4A were all in very good moods when they got to lunch later that morning. Learning about fish could be a lot of fun!
“After lunch we are each going to get assigned a fish to study,” Katie explained to her best friend Jeremy Fox. Jeremy was in class 4B.
“And then Mr. G. told us we’re going to play this really great game where we get to pretend to be our fish,” Kevin added.
“Big deal,” Katie’s other best friend, Suzanne Lock, said. She sat down across from Katie and Jeremy. “You should see the pretty aquarium Ms. Sweet brought in for our classroom.”
“Our classroom is an aquarium,” George said. “Mr. G. decorated every inch of it. You almost feel like you’re underwater when you’re in class 4A!”
Katie watched Suzanne’s face fall. Her best friend really hated it when someone topped her. And she could be pretty mean when it happened.
“That’s perfect for you, George. You smell like a fish. You should be in an aquarium,” Suzanne told him.
Katie sighed. That was such a typical Suzanne thing to say.
“Of course in our class, we had a really awesome surprise,” Suzanne continued. “One that’s a lot cooler than fish stuff.”
“What’s so cool?” Mandy Banks asked, tugging at Suzanne’s sleeve.
“Ms. Sweet is getting married!” Miriam Chan announced before Suzanne could get the words out.
Wow! Katie thought. That was big news.
“I was just going to tell them that!” Suzanne snapped at Miriam.
“Oops. Sorry,” Miriam apologized.
“And, that’s not all,” Suzanne boasted to the kids in class 4A. “We’re having an engagement party for Ms. Sweet.”
“We are?” Jessica Haynes asked Suzanne. “Who says?”
“I do,” Suzanne told her. “I just decided it. Of course it’s only for our class.”
Katie frowned. She hated it when Suzanne left her out of things.
“You understand, don’t you, Katie?” Suzanne asked her.
Katie shrugged, but she didn’t answer.
“I mean Ms. Sweet is our teacher, not yours,” Suzanne reminded her. She smiled triumphantly. “It’s going to be a really great party. I bet that makes all you kids in 4A wish you were in our class.”
“We do not wish that!” Katie exclaimed suddenly. “We don’t wish anything!”
Everyone looked at Katie. They probably think I’m crazy, she thought to herself. But I’m not. I just know that wishes can be terrible things.
Chapter 2
Last year, in third grade, Katie had learned all about wishes. It started one terrible, horrible day, when Katie had missed the football and lost the game for her team. Then she’d fallen in a big mud puddle and ruined her favorite pair of jeans. Even worse, she’d let out a huge burp in front of the whole class. How embarrassing!
That night, Katie had wished she could be anyone but herself. There must have been a shooting star overhead or something, because the next day the magic wind came.
The magic wind was a super-strong, tornado-like wind that blew only around Katie. It was so powerful that every time it came, it turned Katie into someone else.
The first time the magic wind came it turned Katie into Speedy, the class 3A hamster. She’d escaped from her cage, and wound up inside George’s stinky sneaker. Yuck!
Since then, the magic wind had been back again and again. One time it turned her into Mr. Starkey, the school music teacher. The band sounded really terrible when Katie was the conductor!
Katie still got embarrassed thinking about the time the magic wind switcherooed her into her favorite author, Nellie Farrow. Nellie had come to talk to the fourth grade about her new book. The trouble was, Katie hadn’t read the book yet. Because of Katie, Nellie had looked like a fool in front of everybody!
And once, Katie had turned into Jeremy’s kitten, Lucky. That time her own cocker spaniel, Pepper, chased her right up a tree. Katie didn’t blame Pepper, though. After all, cats and dogs just don’t get along.
Not that it was any better the time Katie turned into Pepper himself. She’d gotten into a nasty argument with a squirrel and destroyed her next-door neighbor’s lawn. And poor Pepper was the one blamed.
That was the worst thing about the magic wind. Every time it came, whoever Katie turned into got in big trouble. Then it was up to Katie to make things all right again. And that wasn’t always so easy.
So now Katie didn’t make wishes anymore. She stayed far, far away from them. They caused too many problems.
But of course she couldn’t explain that to her friends. So instead, she just told the other kids, “I meant we like our class a lot, too.”
“Yeah,” George agreed. “We have fun every day. Not just on special occasions.”
“Exactly,” Emma Weber agreed. “Class 4A is really great.”
“Maybe.” Suzanne shrugged. “But our party is going to be incredible. Nothing is going to top it.”
Chapter 3
“Andy, you’re a grouper. That’s a predator fish,” Mr. G. said as he walked around the room after lunch. He was assigning everyone their fish to research. “Emma Stavros, you’re an angelfish.”
“That’s because I’m always so good,” Emma S. said with a smile.
“Kadeem, you’re a red snapper,” Mr. G. continued. “Mandy, you’re an anthias.”
“Anthias? I never heard of that fish,” Mandy said.
“And Kevin, you’re a frog fish,” said Mr. G.
“A frog?” Kevin asked curiously. “Like the ones that say rrbit, rrbit? They’re not fish!”
“You’re a frog fish,” Mr. G. corrected him. “I think you’ll find them interesting. They’re tough predators. They swallow their prey faster than almost any other fish.”
“That sounds like you, Kev,” George joked. “You eat faster than anyone. Even me. You ate that whole pint of grape tomatoes in five minutes last week.”
“Yeah, but tomatoes aren’t fish food,” Kevin reminded him. “At least I don’t think they are.”
“You’ll find out what’s on a frog fish menu when you do your research,” Mr. G. told him. He turned to Emma W. “You’re a predator, too,” he told her. “A swordfish.”
Katie couldn’t help but laugh. It was funny to think of sweet Emma Weber as a vicious swordfish.
“George, you’re a herring,” Mr. G. told him. “And Katie, you’re a clown fish.”
“Hey, Mr. G., don’t you think I should be the clown fish?” George argued with his teacher. “I am the funniest guy in the whole school!”
“Hey!” Kadeem argued.
“Well, I am,” George insisted. “Can’t Katie be a herring instead?”
Mr. G. shook his head. “Nope. No trading. But I think you’ll like being a herring.” The teacher pulled a silver and green kazoo from his pocket. “You get to use this.”
“A kazoo? Why?” George asked.
“Well, herrings make a funny noise when they’re communicating with each other,” Mr. G. said. “It kind of sounds like they’re passing gas.”
“Oh man!” Kadeem laughed. “George’s fish likes to cut the cheese!”
Everyone laughed.
George frowned. “Now I really think Katie should be a herring. She’s Katie Kazoo, remember?”
Katie smiled. How could anybody forget? George had given her that way-cool nickname last year, and it had stuck ever since.
But Katie didn’t want to be a fish with gas. No way!
“Okay, we’ll spend most of this afternoon researching our fish in the library,” Mr. G. said. “And then tomorrow, we’ll play Capture the Prey!”
“How do you play that?” Mandy asked.
“Well, it’s sort of like tag,” Mr. G. told her. “The three predator fish have to catch all of the prey fish. It’s up to the prey fish to stay away and keep safe.”
“Oh, that sounds like fun!” Emma W. exclaimed. “I love playing tag.”
“Me too!” Katie told her. “But I’m not going to let you catch me just because we’re friends.”
“Don’t worry,” Emma W. said. “I’ll eat the other kids first.” She grinned. “You can be my dessert.”
“Clown fish are really cool,” Katie told Jeremy as the fourth-grade kids walked out of school together at the end of the day. “They’re reddish-orange. My hair is almost the same color as they are—except the fish have three white stripes on them. I won’t get that in my hair until I’m really old.”
Jeremy laughed. Katie giggled, too. It was funny picturing herself as an old lady with streaks of white in her red hair.
Just then, George walked by, tooting his kazoo.
“What’s that for?” Becky Stern asked him.
“You wouldn’t understand,” George told her. “It’s a herring thing.”
“George is right,” Kevin agreed. “Herrings have a funny way of talking to one another.”
The kids in class 4A all started to laugh. The kids in class 4B just looked at one another.
Suddenly Suzanne bent down and pulled some ugly green weeds from the grass. Then she began walking slowly down the path that led to the sidewalk. As she walked, she threw pieces of weeds to her left and to her right.
“What are you doing?” Katie asked her.
“I’m practicing being a flower girl,” Suzanne told her.
“Ms. Sweet asked you to be the flower girl in her wedding?” Miriam asked Suzanne.
“Not exactly,” Suzanne admitted. “But she might. And I want to
be prepared.”
Katie sighed. Somehow she doubted that was going to happen. But she didn’t tell Suzanne that. No sense making her angry.
“I think this whole wedding thing is soooooo romantic,” Becky cooed. She looked over at Jeremy. “Do you ever think about your wedding, Jeremy?”
Jeremy’s cheeks turned bright red. “No,” he mumbled. “I’m only ten years old.”
“I think about it all the time,” Becky told him. “I want a white dress with lots of lace. And a really long veil. Don’t you think I’ll look pretty in lace, Jeremy?”
Jeremy blushed harder and turned away.
“Oh, Jeremy,” George said, imitating Becky. “Won’t I be a gorgeous bride?”
“Cut it out, George,” Jeremy grumbled.
“Mrs. Becky Fox,” Kevin added. “It has a nice ring to it.”
“I think so,” Becky said.
“Or maybe you could be Mrs. Rebecca Fox. That’s so much more grown-up,” Miriam suggested.
George and Kevin giggled.
Jeremy groaned.
Katie felt really bad for Jeremy. Everyone knew Becky had a huge crush on Jeremy. But Jeremy didn’t like Becky at all. And he hated it when she flirted with him, like she was doing now.
“Um, Jeremy, don’t you have soccer practice today?” Katie asked him. “I think you’d better get home.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Jeremy said. He smiled gratefully at Katie.
“I’ll come with you,” Katie told him. Then she and Jeremy ran off, getting as far as they could—as fast as they could—from all that wedding talk.
Chapter 4
“Okay, now when I blow this whistle, Andy, Kevin, and Emma W. will try to tag as many of you as possible,” Mr. G. told the kids in class 4A on Tuesday morning. They were all lined up, ready to play Capture the Prey. “If you are tagged, you have to go stand at the edge of the sea . . . I mean the field,” he explained.
As soon as Mr. G. blew his whistle, Katie and the other 4A fish scattered across the field. They moved as fast as their fins . . . er . . . legs could carry them. But some of the fish just weren’t fast enough.
