Ivy and Bean: What's the Big Idea?

by Sophie Blackall

  Ivy + Bean

  Book 7

  OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD!

  ALA Notable Children’s Book 2007

  Booklist, Editor’s Choice, Best Books of 2006

  Kirkus Reviews, Best Books of 2006, Early Chapter Books

  Book Links, Best New Books for the Classroom, 2006

  New York Public Library’s 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2006

  People magazine’s Summer Reading

  Ivy + Bean

  WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?

  written by annie barrows + illustrated by sophie blackall

  For all children’s librarians everywhere,

  but especially for Mrs. Jean Merian —A. B.

  For Leah Brunski, a remarkable teacher —S. B.

  Contents

  BEAN GETS ANTSY

  JUST DESERTS

  HOT AND BOTHERED

  ICEBOUND!

  NO MOLD, NO BODY PARTS

  SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

  RICE AND BEAN

  GRAND SLAM

  SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPALS

  HAPPY ENDING

  AFTERWORD: WHY CAN’T WE JUST THROW ICE CUBES IN THE AIR?

  Bean Gets Antsy

  There had been a problem in Bean’s house. The problem was staples. Bean loved staples. She loved them so much that she had stapled things that weren’t supposed to be stapled. The things looked better stapled, but her mother didn’t think so, and now Bean was outside.

  She was going to be outside for a long time.

  She looked at her backyard. Same old yard, same old trampoline, same old dinky plastic playhouse, same old pile of buckets and ropes and stilts. None of them was any fun. Maybe she could play junkyard crash. Junkyard crash was when you stacked up all the stuff you could find and then drove the toy car into the stack. But it was no fun alone. Bean got up and scuffed across the nice green lawn until she reached the not-so-nice green lawn. This part of Bean’s lawn had holes and lumps in it. The lumps were mostly places where Bean had buried treasure for kids of the future.

  Bean picked up a shovel. To heck with kids of the future. She was bored now. And maybe a secret admirer had added something interesting to her treasure, like a ruby skull or a dinosaur egg.

  Bean didn’t bury her treasure very deep, so it was easy to dig up. This treasure was inside a paper bag, but the paper bag wasn’t doing so well. It wasn’t really a paper bag anymore. “Holy moly!” Bean said loudly. “I’ve found treasure!” She pulled the clumps of paper apart. What a disappointment. No ruby skull. No dinosaur egg. Just the same stuff she had buried two weeks ago: dental floss, tweezers, and a magnifying glass. Some treasure.

  Bean flopped over on her stomach. “I’m dying of boredom,” she moaned, hoping her mother would hear, “I’m dyyy-ing.” She coughed in a dying sort of way, “huh-ACK!” and then lay still. Anyone looking from the porch would think she was dead. And then that person would feel bad.

  Bean lay still.

  Very still.

  She could hear her heart thumping.

  She could feel the hairs on her arm moving.

  Bean opened her eyes. There was an ant scurrying over her arm. Bean pulled the magnifying glass over and peered at the ant. Her arm was like a mountain, and the little ant was like a mountain climber, stumbling along with a tired expression on his face. Poor, hardworking ant. She knew how he felt because sometimes her parents made her go hiking. She watched as he dodged between hairs and charged down the other side of her arm toward the ground. She offered him a blade of grass to use as a slide, but that seemed to confuse him. He paused, looked anxiously right and left, and then continued on her arm. He had a plan, and he was going to stick to it. Bean watched through the magnifying glass as he scuttled into the grass, rushing along the ground between blades. He was in a big hurry. He met another ant by banging into him, but they didn’t even stop to talk. They zipped off in opposite directions.

  Bean followed her ant to a patch of dry dirt. There he plunged down a hole.

  “Come back,” whispered Bean. She liked her ant. Maybe he would come out if she poked his house. She found a thin stick and touched the top of the hole. Four ants streamed out and raced in four different directions. Bean didn’t think any of them was her ant.

  Bean watched the ant hole for a long time. Ants came and went. They all seemed to know where they were going. They all seemed to have important jobs. None of them seemed to notice that they were puny little nothings compared to Bean.

  Bean dragged the hose toward the ant hole. She didn’t turn the hose on. That would be mean. But she let a little bit of water dribble into the hole, and watched as the dirt erupted with ants. Thousands of ants flung themselves this way and that, racing to safety.

  “Help, help,” whispered Bean. “Flood!”

  The ants ran in lines away from the water. Some were holding little grains above their heads. They were the hero ants. But even the nonhero ants were busy. They were all far too busy to notice Bean watching them through the magnifying glass. To them, she was like a planet. She wasn’t part of their world. She was too big and too far away for them to see.

  Bean looked up into the sky. What if someone was watching her through a giant magnifying glass and thinking the same thing she was? What if she was as small as an ant compared to that someone? And what if that someone was an ant compared to the next world after that?

  Wow.

  Bean waved at the sky. Hi out there, she thought.

  Just Deserts

  “Criss-cross applesauce, boys and girls,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate.

  Along with the rest of the second graders, Bean criss-cross applesauced. Then she sat on her hands for good measure. Rug time was tough. It was the rug. The rug had a map of the United States of America on it. Each day at rug time, all the second graders rushed to sit on Colorado. Colorado was the best state because it had the Rocky Mountains in it. That meant whoever sat on Colorado got to yell “I rock!”

  Bean was in Iowa. She didn’t rock. She could rock. She could lean way over, push Vanessa a tiny little bit, slap the corner of Colorado, and say “I rock!” But then Ms. Aruba-Tate would get mad. Bean knew that from experience. So Bean sat on her hands. Next door, in South Dakota, Ivy was trying to cross one eye without crossing the other. She had been trying all day. She didn’t care much about Colorado. Once, she sat on it without even noticing.

  Bean decided to pay attention to what Ms. Aruba-Tate was saying. “Today, class, we are having a special science lesson.” Science! Bean stopped thinking about Colorado. Science was usually dirt or fish, and Bean liked both of them. But now, Ms. Aruba-Tate went on, “A team of scientists from the fifth grade will be presenting a report on global warming. And what do I expect from you, class?”

  “Respectful listening,” everyone answered. Almost everyone. MacAdam was pulling nubbies out of the rug, and he didn’t say anything.

  Bean said it, but she felt only a little bit respectful inside. Nobody listened respectfully to second graders. It wasn’t fair.

  “Let’s welcome our fifth-grade scientists!” called out Ms. Aruba-Tate. The door to the classroom opened and four students shuffled in. Their names were Juan, Matt, Adrian, and Shayna. Only Shayna talked. Juan, Matt, and Adrian held the posters.

  Shayna tossed her hair over her shoulders. “This is a report on global warming,” she said. “Adrian, show the desert. This is a picture of the Gobi Desert, but pretty soon almost everywhere is going to look like this because of global warming. Juan, show the polar bear.” Juan held up a picture of a worried-looking polar bear. “Now!” Shayna said loudly, “Global warming is a total disaster and it’s all our fault.”

  On the rug, the
second graders looked at one another. This did not sound good.

  When school was over, Ivy and Bean slumped like two sacks of potatoes on the bench outside their classroom.

  “Whatcha doing?” asked Leo.

  Ivy and Bean looked up. “We’re worrying about the polar bears,” said Ivy glumly.

  “What polar bears?” asked Leo. Leo was in a different class.

  “There’s not enough ice for them to live on,” said Ivy.

  “They’re going to die out, like the dinosaurs,” said Bean.

  “The heat’s going to get them,” said Ivy.

  Leo kicked their bench. “You guys want to play stomp tag?”

  Ivy and Bean stared at him. “It’s the pollution,” said Bean.

  “From cars,” said Ivy.

  “And cow poop,” Bean reminded her.

  Leo made a snorty sound. He thought cow poop was funny. Ivy and Bean frowned at him. “I’ll be it,” he said.

  “What?” said Bean.

  “I’ll be it. You can even stomp me for free if you want,” said Leo. He stuck his foot out. “Go ahead.”

  Bean shook her head. “We’re busy,” she said.

  Leo looked up and down the breezeway. It was empty. “What are you busy doing?”

  “We’re busy worrying,” said Bean.

  After a while, Leo found some other kids who wanted to play stomp tag, and Ivy and Bean got up and began to worry their way home.

  “Poor trees,” said Ivy, patting one.

  “Yeah,” said Bean. She kicked a car parked at the curb. “Take that!” she yelled and felt a little better.

  At home, Bean’s mom had heard about global warming and even about the polar bears. Bean’s dad knew about it, too. Bean’s older sister, Nancy, said, “Ha! That’s nothing. Just wait until you find out about the oceans.”

  “What about the oceans?” asked Bean quickly.

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” said Nancy. “But it’s terrible,” she added.

  Bean was too worried even to throw something at her. She went into the backyard and wandered across the lawn. Poor grass. Poor trees. She squatted down by the patch of dirt where the ants lived and patted it. Poor ants.

  She hated global warming.

  Hot and Bothered

  The next day, no one rushed to sit on Colorado. Dusit sat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean without pretending he was drowning. Bean and Ivy flopped onto Wisconsin together.

  Ms. Aruba-Tate was explaining capital letters with her big purple pen. The first letter at the beginning of a sentence was always capital.

  Okay, thought the second grade.

  The first letter of a person’s name or a place was always capital, too.

  Fine, thought the second grade. Whatever.

  Ms. Aruba-Tate put the cap on her big purple pen and looked at the children on the rug. “Well!” she said, “I know something that will pep you up. Emerson School is going to have a science fair!”

  “No!” groaned Bean.

  “I hate science,” said Emma. Drew and Eric nodded.

  Ms. Aruba-Tate raised her eyebrows. “I’m confused, boys and girls,” she said. “I thought you liked science.”

  “No. We hate it,” Zuzu said. “It’s awful.”

  “But,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate, “what about fish prints? You liked making fish prints, didn’t you?”

  “Those were okay,” said Emma. “And our insect studies,” Ms. Aruba-Tate asked. “You liked those, didn’t you?”

  “That cicada was cool,” said Marga-Lee.

  “Remember the hissing cockroach?” said Drew. “That was cool, too.”

  “What about marine reptiles?” said Ms. Aruba-Tate. “Elasmosaur and plesiosaur?”

  “And mosasaur!” yelled Eric. Eric loved mosasaur.

  “Then why do you say you hate science?” asked Ms. Aruba-Tate.

  “Global warming!” chanted the second graders.

  “Global warming?” asked Ms. Aruba-Tate.

  “Didn’t you listen, Ms. Aruba-Tate?” Bean said. “The whole world is going to turn into a desert.”

  “The polar bears are going to die out,” said Ivy.

  “And the frogs,” said Emma.

  “And newts,” said Eric. “Squishy things are in trouble.”

  “All the animals are in trouble,” said Drew.

  “And it’s all our fault!” said Bean. That was the worst part.

  Ms. Aruba-Tate was quiet for a moment. She looked like she was thinking hard. Then she said, “Boys and girls, I’m hearing that you are very worried about global warming. I’m feeling sorry that you’re worried, but I’m also feeling glad that you care so much about the earth. People who care as much as you do are the people who will find solutions to the problem.”

  The second graders looked at each other. Solutions? There were solutions? “Right now, scientists all over the world are trying to find ways to stop global warming. Science is the solution, not the problem. That’s why I’m sad when I hear you say you hate science.”

  “They should work harder,” said Drew.

  Ms. Aruba-Tate looked at him. “Do you remember, Drew, when we talked about cave dwellers? Some of you thought cave dwellers were stupid, because they didn’t know how to build houses, and we talked about how people have to experiment in order to make their lives better. Remember?”

  “Yeah,” said Emma. “We decided maybe cave men got the idea for houses from watching termites.”

  “Exactly!” said Ms. Aruba-Tate. “We get ideas, we experiment, and we find solutions to our problems. That’s what scientists do.”

  “But they haven’t found the solution to global warming,” said Ivy.

  “They haven’t found one perfect solution, but they’ve found lots of little ones, like cars that don’t pollute so much. Each little solution is a step toward a big solution,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate. “Do you think the first house built by a cave man was perfect? No, it probably collapsed—”

  “It caved in!” yelled Dusit. Eric and Drew fell over laughing.

  “Thank you, Dusit,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate. “And the second house probably caved in, too. But each time, the cave dwellers learned something new, and in the end, they built a house that stayed up. They were cave scientists. Scientists don’t give up if something doesn’t work perfectly; they look for new ideas to make it better.” She smiled. “And that reminds me of you. You children have new ideas all the time, which means you’re already good scientists. Each one of you could come up with an idea to fight global warming.”

  “But we’re kids,” said Vanessa.

  “You’re kid scientists,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate firmly. “What we need for this problem is new ideas. And you kids are great at that.”

  “Yeah,” whispered Bean. She was great at new ideas. She had them all the time.

  “So—I think we have our theme for the Emerson School Science Fair, don’t you?” asked Ms. Aruba-Tate. “Ideas that fight global warming.”

  Oh, this is going to be great, thought Bean. If she stopped global warming, she’d be the most famous person in the world. “Do you win anything if your idea is the best?” she called out.

  Ms. Aruba-Tate smiled. “You sure do. You win a special certificate of Scientific Achievement from the Principal!”

  Sheesh. Bean had been hoping for money. But she would fight global warming anyway.

  Icebound!

  “This would be a lot easier if we had some of those white coats,” Bean said. She speared her bagel on her thumb and took a chomp out of it.

  “Lab coats,” said Ivy, licking her cream cheese. “And lots of little bottles of chemicals.”

  “What if there was just this one chemical that would stop global warming and we discovered it?” Bean said dreamily. She imagined herself holding up a test tube full of shimmering pink stuff. TA-DA, she was saying. All around her, other scientists clapped in amazement.

  “Don’t you remember?” Ivy interrupted her dream. “My
mom said she was never going to get me another chemistry set after what happened last time.”

  “You have some potion ingredients, don’t you?” asked Bean. Ivy was going to be a witch when she grew up, so there were usually potion ingredients in her room.

  “I’ve got some dead flies and some baking soda,” said Ivy. “And some brick powder.”

  Bean sighed. “I don’t think any of those is going to cure global warming.”

  “Me neither,” said Ivy. “But what will?”

  “We have to think,” said Bean.

  Ivy thought and sucked cream cheese out of her hair.

  Bean thought and squeezed her head between her hands until her eyeballs almost popped out. “There’s recycling, I guess,” she said. “We could show how it’s good for the earth.”

  “But everyone already knows about recycling,” said Ivy. “We’re supposed to have a new idea.”

  They thought some more.

  Bean’s dad came into the kitchen. He looked at their thinking faces and sat down at the table next to Bean. “What’s happening, kidalunks?”

  “We need an idea to stop global warming,” said Bean.

  “Easy,” he said. “Get rid of cars.”

  “Dad, we’re seven. We don’t have cars. We need something we can do for a science fair.”

  “Oh,” said her dad. He leaned against the back of his chair and frowned. For several moments it was quiet.

  Suddenly, he snapped his fingers. “Okay! Got one! You guys can make posters that remind people to turn out the lights! You know, to save electricity. You could have a slogan, like ‘Lights Out When You’re Out!’” He smiled at them proudly. “Isn’t that good?”