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
Chapter 11
Chapter 12 - Bat Facts!
About the Author
About the Illustrators
For Jane O’Connor, with thanks for all she does
for Katie and me.—NK
For Jonas, head honcho of the bat cave.—J&W
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Text copyright © 2009 by Nancy Krulik. Illustrations copyright © 2009 by John and Wendy. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. S.A.
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Chapter 1
“I love seeing things upside down,” Katie Carew said as she flipped over on the monkey bars. “Everyone looks so funny.”
“I know,” Katie’s best friend, Suzanne Lock, agreed. “It’s like they’re walking on the ceiling.”
“A cement ceiling,” Katie added with a giggle.
Just then, Becky Stern scrambled up the monkey bars. She hooked her knees over one of the metal bars, and flipped upside down next to Katie and Suzanne.
“Hi, Becky,” Katie greeted her.
“Yeah, hi,” Suzanne added. She didn’t sound as happy to see Becky as Katie did.
“I’m wearing shorts under my skirt so no one can see my underpants,” Becky told the girls.
“I’ve been wearing shorts under my skirts since second grade,” Suzanne said proudly. “I was the first one in the whole school to do it. But you wouldn’t know that because you didn’t move here until the middle of third grade.”
Katie rolled her eyes. That was soooo Suzanne. She was always bragging.
“You know, when we smile it looks like we’re frowning,” Becky told Katie and Suzanne. “At least to the people who are standing right-side up.”
Suzanne frowned. Katie could tell it was a real frown because she and Suzanne were both upside down. Suzanne looked right-side up to her. Well, sort of.
Katie knew exactly why Suzanne was frowning. Becky had changed the subject. Suzanne hated not being the center of attention.
Just then Katie spotted her other best friend, Jeremy Fox, walking by with George Brennan and Kevin Camilleri. Now no matter what Suzanne said or did, Becky wouldn’t pay any attention to her. That was because Becky had a crush on Jeremy. A huge crush.
Unfortunately, Jeremy did not have a crush on Becky. He usually tried to stay far, far away from her. But Becky had seen Jeremy. There was no way he could avoid her now.
“Hi, Jeremy!” Becky called out.
Jeremy pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked down at the ground. “Hi, Becky,” he muttered.
George and Kevin laughed.
“Hi, Jeremy,” George said, making his voice sound high and squeaky, like a girl’s.
“Cut it out,” Jeremy told George.
“Your girlfriend is calling you,” Kevin joked.
“She is not my girlfriend!” Jeremy insisted.
“Watch this, Jeremy!” Becky shouted. She grabbed hold of the bars on either side of her. Then she flipped over, and flew off the monkey bars. She landed on her feet and threw her arms up in the air.
“Awesome,” George said.
“Very cool,” Kevin added.
“Did you like my flip, Jeremy?” Becky asked him.
Jeremy shrugged. “It was okay,” he said. Then he ran off as fast as he could.
Suzanne sat up on the monkey bars. Katie did, too. “Becky’s such a show-off,” Suzanne whispered to Katie. “I am so sick of her doing gymnastics all the time! And I hate the way she always copies me. She didn’t have to wear a skirt with shorts under it. She could have worn jeans, like you.”
Katie sighed. Suzanne was just mad because everyone had thought Becky’s flip was really cool.
“I’m sorry Becky ever moved here,” Suzanne said. “I wish she would just go back to where she came from!”
Katie gasped. “Suzanne, you do not wish that! You do not wish that at all!”
Suzanne stared at Katie with surprise. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked her.
Oops. Katie didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t meant to get so upset. It was just that Katie hated wishes.
That was because she knew how much trouble they could cause if they came true.
Chapter 2
It had all started one horrible day back in third grade. First, Katie had missed the football and lost the game for her team. Then she’d fallen in the mud and ruined her new jeans. Worst of all, she’d let out a giant burp right in front of the whole class. The kids had really teased her about that. Especially George. And he could be a really bad teaser.
It had definitely been one of the most embarrassing days of Katie’s whole life. And that night, Katie wished she could be anyone but herself. There must have been a shooting star flying overhead when Katie made her wish, because the very next day the magic wind came.
The magic wind was unlike any wind Katie had ever seen before. It was a wild, fierce tornado that only blew around Katie.
But the worst part came after the wind stopped blowing. That’s when the magic wind turned Katie into someone else. One . . . two . . . switcheroo!
The magic wind could turn Katie into anyone. The first time it appeared, it changed her into Speedy, the hamster in her third grade classroom. Katie spent the whole morning going around and around on a hamster wheel, and chewing on Speedy’s wooden chew sticks. Blech! They tasted worse than the food in the school cafeteria!
Another time the magic wind came and turned Katie into Jeremy. That had been really awful. Katie hadn’t known whether to go into the boys’ room or the girls’ room. She was really lucky she didn’t have an accident that day!
Katie knew she would never f
orget when the magic wind showed up during her family vacation in Europe. That was when it turned Katie into an Italian gondola driver! Suddenly it was her job to paddle a boatload of people through the little canals in Venice.
Unfortunately, Katie didn’t know her way around Venice. She didn’t speak Italian either. Katie wound up getting everybody really, really lost. Mamma mia! What a mess that had been!
The magic wind was the reason Katie hated wishes so much. But of course she couldn’t explain that to Suzanne. Her best friend probably wouldn’t believe her even if she did. Katie wouldn’t have believed it either, if it didn’t keep happening to her.
Still, Katie knew she had to say something. Suzanne was staring at her.
“I just meant that you should learn to ignore Becky,” Katie explained finally. “She’s not going to go away. So you have to deal with her.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Suzanne answered.
Just then one of the teachers blew a loud whistle.
“Yes, you do,” Katie told Suzanne. “You have to go inside. School’s about to start.”
“Okay, I guess I have to do that,” Suzanne admitted. “But I don’t have to sit near Becky in class. And I don’t have to talk to her either.”
There was no way the 4B teacher, Ms. Sweet, was going to let Suzanne ignore Becky all day. Sooner or later Suzanne would have to talk to her. But that didn’t mean Suzanne was going to be nice when she did.
Today, more than ever, Katie was really glad she was in class 4A.
Chapter 3
Katie had lots of reasons to be glad she was in class 4A. Her teacher, Mr. Guthrie, was always surprising his class with cool and exciting things to do. And today was no exception!
As Katie walked up to the door of class 4A, she noticed something really weird. It was dark inside the classroom. All the window shades were drawn tight.
It was almost impossible for Katie to see anything. But once her eyes got used to the darkness, Katie realized that Mr. G had done something amazing to the room. He’d turned it into a dark, secret, animal world.
Well, not real animals. They were actually stuffed animals. But the room looked cool just the same. There were raccoons and opossums hiding near the trash can. A black-and-white skunk sat on the windowsill. A plastic owl with glow-in-the-dark eyes was perched on the branches of a fake tree near the chalkboard. And several rubber bats were hanging upside down from the light fixtures on the ceiling.
Seeing her classroom changed like this didn’t seem weird to Katie at all. Mr. G was always decorating class 4A in fun ways.
What was weird, though, was the fact that Mr. G was nowhere to be found. Usually Katie’s teacher greeted the kids as they walked into the room. But not today. The kids didn’t see him anywhere.
“Hey, where’s Mr. G?” Andy Epstein wondered out loud.
“Do you think he’s absent?” Emma Stavros asked.
“I doubt it,” Kevin answered her. “No substitute would have done all this to our classroom.”
“That’s true,” Emma S. agreed. “This is definitely a Mr. G room.”
Mandy Banks picked up one of the stuffed raccoons. “What do you think this all means?” she wondered.
Katie looked up at the bats hanging from the ceiling. “Maybe it’s for a Halloween party,” she suggested. “I saw toy bats just like those in the Halloween section of the Party Palace store.”
“But Halloween’s not for two weeks, Katie Kazoo,” George said, using the way-cool nickname he’d given her back in third grade.
“It’s kind of creepy just standing here in the dark with no teacher,” Emma Weber said.
“Maybe we should turn a light on,” Andy suggested.
Bam! Just then the closet door swung open.
“AAAAHHHHH!” The kids all screamed at once.
Then they began to laugh. Their teacher had just burst out of the closet. He was wearing gray and pink mouse ears on his head and a long gray tail on his behind.
“Mr. G!” Emma Weber shouted. “You scared me.”
“Not me,” George said. He was laughing really hard. “Why are you dressed like that?”
Kevin Camilleri walked over toward the light switch. But before he could flip it, Mr. G stopped him.
“Don’t turn on the lights,” Mr. G told Kevin. “Mice like me are happiest in the dark. So are opossums, skunks, bats, and raccoons. Too much light hurts our eyes.”
“I think I know what this is all about,” Katie said suddenly. “We’re studying animals that come out in the dark.”
“Very good, Katie,” Mr. G told her. “They’re called nocturnal animals.”
Katie knew all about nocturnal animals because she had once been a nocturnal animal. One time at summer camp, the magic wind had turned her into a raccoon.
But of course Katie couldn’t tell Mr. G that. So she said, “I already know raccoons are happiest in the dark.”
“They sure are,” Mr. G said. “All nocturnal animals are more active in the nighttime than in the daytime.”
“Can we get started decorating our beanbags?” Emma W. asked Mr. G excitedly.
“Yep,” Mr. G agreed. “Go to it!”
Decorating her beanbag chair was one of the things Katie loved best about being in Mr. G’s class. The kids in 4A didn’t sit at desks like other kids. They sat on beanbags. Mr. G thought kids learned better when they were comfortable.
Every time the class started a new learning adventure, they got to decorate their beanbag chairs with the craft supplies Mr. G kept in bags and boxes in the back of the classroom. Katie was using construction paper and streamers to turn her beanbag into a big raccoon.
Emma W. dotted her beanbag with pieces of shiny wrapping paper. “They’re fireflies,” she explained to Katie. “They only come out at night.”
George used black-and-white construction paper to turn his beanbag into a giant skunk. Then he took off his sneakers and began rubbing them all over his beanbag chair.
“Dude, what are you doing?” Mr. G asked George.
“Making my beanbag smell,” George answered. “My sneakers stink as bad as any real skunk.”
“That’s the truth,” Kevin agreed.
Mr. G laughed. “How about we just pretend your beanbag skunk smells?” he suggested. “Put your sneakers back on. You’re going to need them in a few minutes. We’re going outside to play a special game.”
Katie grinned. They were going to get to go outside and run around, and it wasn’t even gym class!
One thing was for sure. Class 4A was the best place to be . . . day or night!
Chapter 4
“We’re so lucky,” Katie said to Emma W. as the girls walked outside with the rest of the kids in class 4A. “Everyone else at school is inside doing work, and we’re out here.”
“I know,” Emma W. agreed. “I wonder what kind of game we’re going to play.”
The girls didn’t have to wait long to find out. A minute later, Mr. G stood in front of the class. He was holding a blindfold.
“Today we’re playing a game called Bat and Bugs,” Mr. G told the kids. “One of you will be a bat, and the rest of you will be mosquitoes. The trick is for the bat to catch as many mosquitoes as he can.”
“Oh, it’s just like tag,” Kadeem Carter said.
“Sort of,” Mr. G said. “Except the person who is doing the tagging is blindfolded.”
The kids all stared at their teacher. That didn’t make any sense at all.
“How is the bat supposed to find the mosquitoes if she’s blindfolded?” Mandy Banks asked Mr. G.
“With echolocation,” Mr. G replied.
“Echo what?” George asked.
“Echolocation,” Mr. G said again. “That’s how bats catch their food in the wild. Bats don’t see very well. So they make sounds to help them find food.”
“Okay, that makes no sense at all,” George said.
“It makes a lot of sense,” Mr. G assured him. “In fact bats use thei
r best sense when they use echolocation.”
“What’s a bat’s best sense?” Katie asked.
“Good question, Katie,” Mr. G said.
Katie smiled proudly. She knew Mr. G thought that asking good questions was really, really important. He said it was how kids learned.
“Bats have a very strong sense of hearing. It’s more powerful than their eyesight,” Mr. G told the class. “So when bats are looking for food, they send out sound waves using their mouth or nose. When the sound hits an object, an echo comes back. The bat can tell what kind of object it is by the sound of the echo. They can even tell the size, shape, and texture of a tiny insect!”
“So in the game the person who is the bat has to send out a sound?” Andy asked.
“Exactly,” Mr. G agreed. “And all the mosquitoes have to send back the same sound. They echo the bat. Then the bat moves in the direction of the sounds. The echoes tell him the location of the mosquitoes. Echolocation.”
“Cool!” George said. “Can I be the bat first?”
“Sure,” Mr. G said. “Come on up and put the blindfold on.”
A minute later, the blindfolded George-the-bat was running, searching for the mosquitoes.
“Blurp,” George shouted out.
“Blurp,” the kids echoed back.
“Gleep,” George called out.
“Gleep,” the kids echoed back again.
Katie giggled as she watched George trying to catch some “mosquitoes.” His arms were flailing all around as he tried to catch his friends.
“Shloop!” George-the-bat screamed.
Katie laughed even harder. She doubted real bats made such goofy noises. But George’s silly sounds were making the game even more fun.
“Shloop!” Katie-the-mosquito yelled back happily.
Katie would not have been happy if the magic wind had come and switcherooed her into a real mosquito. She didn’t think stinging people would be much fun. And getting squooshed? Horrible.
But the magic wind was nowhere near her. And Katie wasn’t a real mosquito. She was just a pretend mosquito.
