Gooney Bird and All Her Charms

by Lois Lowry

  “Napoleon Bonaparte was a very famous French general,” Mrs. Pidgeon explained to the class.

  “We could call him Bony for short,” suggested Ben.

  “No,” Gooney Bird said solemnly. “He shouldn’t have a goofy name. We should be very respectful. He’s a very distinguished skeleton.” She stroked the long bone at the top of his left leg. Then she looked down and giggled a little. “He has big feet, though.”

  Dr. Oglethorpe picked up the empty box. “I must be off,” he said. “But I know I’m leaving Napoleon in good hands. Just be careful with him. You can take him down from the stand and seat him in a chair if you wish. His joints work well. See?” He demonstrated the joints, bending Napoleon’s left knee, then his right elbow. “His hip joint is really amazing. See this?” He pointed to Napoleon’s hip. “It’s a ball and socket. That’s why we can move our legs in all directions. We wouldn’t be able to dance if we didn’t have this fabulous hip joint.”

  Chelsea, who took ballet lessons, stood on her tiptoes and lifted one leg out to the side.

  Tyrone threw himself onto the floor beside his desk and did a few breakdancing moves.

  Mrs. Pidgeon did a hopping little sort of jig.

  “Good. You all have great hip joints! But be gentle with Napoleon. He doesn’t have a layer of fat to pad his bones the way we do.”

  “I bet that’s why he looks so skinny,” Ben said.

  “Dr. O.? Dr. O.?” Tricia had a question, and the doctor nodded to her.

  “If Napoleon had all the rest of him, I mean if he wasn’t just bones, if he had fat, and—what else?”

  “Muscles!” said Barry.

  “Yes, if he had muscles and fat, and—skin?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would he be fat, or thin, or just medium?” Tricia asked.

  “Good question,” Dr. Oglethorpe said. “We have no way of knowing. Bones are the same in all people. We don’t know if Napoleon was a fatty or a skinny, or—”

  “Smart or dumb!” said Barry.

  “Or Japanese?” suggested Keiko.

  “African American?” said Tyrone.

  “Or maybe he had bright red hair, like mine!” Gooney Bird pointed out.

  Dr. Oglethorpe laughed. “Or perhaps he was a baldy, like me.”

  “Or had a beard, like my dad,” suggested Ben.

  “Could be,” the doctor agreed. “We’ll never know.” He patted Napoleon on the shoulder. “Goodbye, pal,” he said. “Have a nice visit in second grade.”

  The class called a thank-you to Dr. Oglethorpe. Gooney Bird left the room to walk her great-uncle to the front door of the school. And Mrs. Pidgeon carefully moved the stand so that Napoleon was next to the large chart that she had pulled down. They all stared at him quietly.

  “See how his ribs protect the softer inside parts?” Mrs. Pidgeon pointed out.

  “My dad broke two ribs once,” Ben said. “He was hiking and he slipped on a wet place and fell into a big rock. It really hurt.”

  “But look!” Barry said, pointing to the chart. “If your dad didn’t hit his ribs, he would have broken his heart, maybe! Or his lungs!”

  “Good for those ribs!” Mrs. Pidgeon said. “Is your dad okay, Ben?”

  Ben nodded. “He’s fine. All healed.”

  “The skeleton protected his important organs,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. “And it also made it possible for him to stand up and hike. Look at his strong leg bones. If we didn’t have bones, well . . .” She stared at the skeleton for a moment.

  Felicia Ann finished the sentence in an awed voice: “We’d just be a blob.”

  All of the children stared at Napoleon. They looked down at their own arms and legs.

  “Blobs,” they agreed.

  “Look at Napoleon’s head!” said Chelsea, suddenly.

  “He’s got pretty good teeth,” Tricia said. “I bet he flossed.”

  “His eyeholes are kind of creepy,” Tyrone pointed out. Then he chanted, “Got two big holes in the front of my head, and got no eyeballs cuz I be dead . . .” Tyrone was very good at creating rhymes and raps.

  “I meant,” Chelsea said impatiently, “does it remind you of anything?”

  “A skull,” Barry said.

  “Yeah, a skull,” Nicholas agreed. “It reminds me of a skull because it is a skull!”

  “It reminds me of Gooney Bird’s bracelet!” Keiko said.

  “Yes! It’s like the skull on Gooney Bird’s bracelet!” Beanie agreed.

  “Did I hear someone say my name?” The classroom door opened and Gooney Bird reappeared. “I brought Mr. Leroy back with me,” she said. “He wanted to know what was in Uncle Walter’s box.”

  The principal came through the door behind Gooney Bird. “It looked as if your class was receiving a good-size present! I thought I’d come see what it was. Gooney Bird wouldn’t tell me. She said it should be a surprise.”

  “Look!” The second-graders pointed to the side of the room where the skeleton was dangling from his stand. Mr. Leroy turned, looked, and jumped back in surprise.

  “Holy moley!” he gasped. “What on earth—?”

  “It’s Napoleon!” they called, laughing at his reaction.

  “You might as well shake his hand,” Mrs. Pidgeon told the principal. “He’s going to be with us all month.”

  Mr. Leroy took a deep breath. Then he lifted Napoleon’s bony hand and shook it gently. “Welcome to Watertower Elementary School,” he said, and bowed slightly.

  3

  “Good morning, students,” Mr. Leroy said on the intercom the next day after the bell rang and school had begun. “We have some announcements, and then a special treat this morning.”

  “I bet he’s going to tell about Napoleon!” Barry said. “The other grades are going to be so jealous!”

  “Shhh,” said Mrs. Pidgeon. “Pay attention.”

  “First of all, good news,” Mr. Leroy announced. “Bruno is home from the hospital and he’s going to be fine!”

  Everyone cheered. Bruno was the school dog, a huge Newfoundland that belonged to Mr. Furillo, the school custodian. He slept most of the time, and everyone was accustomed to walking around a snoring pile of black fur. But poor Bruno. Last week he had fallen asleep beside the rear wheel of one of the school buses. His tail had been run over.

  “Bruno will be back in school tomorrow and we’ll all be happy to see him,” Mr. Leroy went on. “No dog treats, though, please. And no lunch scraps! The vet said that Bruno is a little overweight. I think some of you have been giving him your sandwiches at lunchtime.”

  “Not the bread,” Nicholas said in a loud whisper. “I just gave him the bologna.”

  “Shhh. Pay attention to Mr. Leroy.” Mrs. Pidgeon put her finger to her lips.

  “Next: remind your parents. Bake sale at lunchtime next Tuesday! We’re all hoping that someone’s mom will make those delicious lemon squares again! The proceeds will go toward new music for the school band, and our music director, Mr. Bornstein, says thank you in advance!”

  “Now he’s going to say about Napoleon, I bet!” Malcolm said.

  “Shhh.”

  But he didn’t. Instead, Mr. Leroy said, “Finally, our special treat this morning: Lielit Brehanu is going to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Lielit’s mother and father have just officially become American citizens!”

  Everyone clapped. They all liked the quiet fourth grade girl who had come with her parents from Ethiopia last year. The children stood beside their desks and repeated the pledge with Lielit, who said the words proudly but sounded a little nervous over the intercom.

  “Thank you, Lielit. And have a good day, everybody!” Mr. Leroy said, as he did every morning, and the speaker fell silent.

  “I bet Napoleon’s feelings are hurt,” Beanie said. “He didn’t even get mentioned!”

  They all looked sympathetically at the skeleton.

  “I’m starting to have an idea,” Gooney Bird announced.

  “What sort of idea?” M
rs. Pidgeon asked. They all knew that Gooney Bird’s ideas were always good ones.

  “About how we can make Napoleon famous in our school, but also it will be educational, and it won’t be dangerous or anything.”

  “Sounds terrific,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. “Ready to tell us about it?”

  “Not quite. My brain is still at work.”

  “Fair enough. And actually, class, I was going to start our study of the human body with exactly that!”

  “With what?” the children asked.

  “With the brain!” Mrs. Pidgeon announced.

  Keiko raised her hand and Mrs. Pidgeon said, “Yes, Keiko?”

  “Napoleon doesn’t have a brain,” Keiko said sadly in a soft voice.

  “He did once!” Barry said.

  “Yes, he certainly did. And what protected it?” Mrs. Pidgeon used her pointer and pointed to the chart, where the outlined head showed a wrinkled pinkish brain. Then she pointed to Napoleon’s head.

  “Skull!” all the children called.

  Gooney Bird reached into her desk and pulled out her bracelet. She held it up so they could all see the small silver skull.

  “Mrs. Pidgeon! Mrs. Pidgeon!” Malcolm was waving his hand. “Guess what!”

  “What, Malcolm?”

  “Last summer, at Little League, the pitcher hit me in the head with the ball! But I had a helmet on, and under my helmet was my skull, so I had lots of protection, and my brain was okay!”

  “I’m glad to hear that, Malcolm. Not glad that you got hit by the ball, but glad that you didn’t get hurt. Now, class—”

  “He did it on purpose! It was Jamie Morrissy who was pitching, and he always hits people on purpose! My dad said that if he does it again—”

  Mrs. Pidgeon went to Malcolm and put her calm-down arm across his shoulders.

  “Malcolm’s brain is at work right now, class,” she said. “He’s remembering last summer, and it is our brain that stores our memories.”

  “Lielit used her brain to remember all the words to the Pledge of Allegiance,” Felicia Ann said.

  “And to say them,” Mrs. Pidgeon added. “Our brains control talking, and—what else?”

  “Seeing!”

  “Smelling!”

  “Hearing!”

  Every child had a hand in the air.

  “The brain is like Command Central,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. “Messages zoom around brain cells faster than we can even imagine. And we have billions of brain cells! They’re called neurons.

  “They tell us if we’re hungry or thirsty, or if we hear an airplane—”

  “Our ears tell us that!” Ben said.

  Mrs. Pidgeon used her pointer and tapped on the left ear of the figure on the chart. “Correct. Our ears take in the vibrations that cause the sound, and then the inner parts of the ear process the vibrations and send them to the brain so that Command Central can decide what the sound is. A jet engine? A mosquito? A baby crying?”

  “Triplets all crying at once!” Malcolm said, and put his hands over his ears.

  “And if the brain tells you it’s a jet flying over, it also tells you to—”

  “Look up at the sky?” said Nicholas.

  “Right. But if the brain says, ‘Mosquito zooming in’?”

  “Then Command Central says to slap it!” Beanie said. The children all slapped at their own arms and necks.

  “Right. The brain tells your muscles to move your arm into a slapping position.”

  “Never fast enough,” Tricia said. Everyone laughed.

  “Let’s begin reading this chapter. Tyrone? Will you read the first paragraph aloud?”

  Mrs. Pidgeon paused and looked at Gooney Bird. “Gooney Bird? You with us? Or is your brain still working on its idea?”

  Gooney Bird looked up. “Nope,” she said. “My idea is all worked out.”

  “Tell us! Tell us!” all the second-graders called.

  “I will,” she said, “after we read about the brain. Go ahead with your turn, Tyrone. Is your brain making a rap?”

  Tyrone grinned. “Tryin’ to,” he admitted. “But I always tell it to stop when we’re workin’ on serious stuff.”

  He stood and began to read aloud as the other children followed the words in the book.

  They took turns. Tyrone stood beside his desk and read about how important the brain was, and how it never stopped working, not even when you were asleep.

  “I think it makes dreams,” Felicia Ann whispered.

  “And nightmares?” asked Keiko nervously.

  “Yes, nightmares too.”

  “Oh dear,” said Keiko.

  “Why don’t you go next, Keiko?” Mrs. Pidgeon suggested.

  So Keiko stood and read about how the eyes are connected to the brain, and the brain explains to us what we are seeing.

  Then Malcolm read to the class the paragraph about hearing. He still wanted to tell the class about the noise the triplets in his family made. All that screaming, Malcolm described, came in through your ears as vibrations, and if there were too many vibrations, and therefore too much noise, the person whose brain was hearing it might get a terrible headache.

  “My mom always has a headache,” he said.

  “But sometimes those babies are laughing, Malcolm,” Mrs. Pidgeon pointed out. “Does your mom have a headache then?”

  “Well, no,” Malcolm admitted. “She starts to laugh. We all do.”

  One by one the children stood and read aloud about the many things that the brain can do. When Chelsea read about the sense of smell, they held up different things that had different smells: an eraser, a jar of paste, an open marking pen, and an orange from Ben’s lunch. They read about taste.

  “The brain has to work hard,” Barry said.

  “And it has to remember everything!” Chelsea pointed out. “It has to memorize!”

  “It’s how we learn, isn’t it, Mrs. Pidgeon? With our brains?” Tyrone asked. His foot began to tap a bit. He snapped the fingers on one hand.

  Mrs. Pidgeon started to laugh a little. “Tyrone, I can tell that your brain is at work. You have a rap coming on, don’t you?”

  He nodded, with a grin.

  “Okay, let’s hear it,” she said.

  Tyrone stood, snapped his fingers, wiggled his hips, and chanted, “Stuffing it full don’t cause no pain, cuz that be the job of Mister Brain”!

  “Lemme hear it!” he called to the class. “Mister Brain!” they all chanted.

  Tyrone twirled in a circle and began his next verse. “That noise you hear, is it a car or a train? Who knows the difference?” He cupped his ear with his hand as if to listen.

  “Mister Brain!”

  “You eat fried clams, or you eat chow mein?” Tyrone twirled again and made an eating motion as if he were lifting a fork to his mouth. “Who knows the difference?”

  “MISTER BRAIN!” the second-graders called loudly, laughing.

  Tyrone bowed, and they all applauded. “I got more,” he said. “But I’ll save it.”

  “Save it in your brain!” Gooney Bird said. “And my brain’s ready now with my idea.”

  The class was silent, waiting.

  “We need to take Napoleon traveling,” Gooney Bird said, “so that the other classes can meet him and learn about him.”

  “Traveling?” Chelsea said. “How can he travel?”

  Gooney Bird pointed out the small wheels that allowed Napoleon’s stand to move. “We roll him to his destination,” she explained. “Then we’ll lift him down and put him in his place. Remember Uncle Walter said we could sit him in a chair if we were careful?”

  “What place? Where are we taking him?” Barry asked.

  “You look worried, Barry,” Gooney Bird said. “But look at Napoleon. He’s not worried at all.”

  It was true. “He’s smiling,” Keiko said. All of the children stared at Napoleon’s head. They made big smiles, showing their teeth.

  “As for where we’re taking him? We’ve been studying his brai
n. So we need to show him using his brain. Where would that be, in this school?”

  Mrs. Pidgeon smiled. “I know!” she said. “The library! Of course,” she added, “I hope you all use your brains everywhere. But I bet anything the library is what Gooney Bird has in mind.”

  Gooney Bird nodded.

  “Gooney Bird,” Mrs. Pidgeon went on, “I think you should go consult with Mrs. Clancy to be sure it’s all right with her.”

  Gooney Bird was already at her cubby, looking for the hat that she always wore when she paid a call on someone important. And Mrs. Clancy, the school librarian, was certainly important.

  “While I’m gone,” Gooney Bird suggested, “maybe you could think about how Napoleon should be dressed in a brain-using outfit for his visit to the library.”

  She adjusted the flowered hat over her red hair, left the classroom, and disappeared down the hall.

  “Dressed?” said Mrs. Pidgeon, turning to the class. “Brain-using outfit? Oh, dear.”

  4

  Barry and Ben, who had lifted Napoleon very carefully from his stand, sat him down in the chair that the class had selected. The library was filled with tables and chairs, but it also had a cozy reading corner furnished with a soft couch and a comfortable rocking chair. Sometimes Mr. Leroy sat there and read the newspaper in the middle of the morning, but not very often. He really liked drinking coffee with the newspaper, and Mrs. Clancy said, “Absolutely not. No coffee in the library.” She let Mr. Leroy take the newspaper to his office, instead.

  “Yes, that one’s fine,” Mrs. Clancy agreed when the second-graders pointed out the rocking chair they had chosen for Napoleon. “I think he’d look very contented there. Let’s give him a cushion.” She took a soft pillow from the corner of the couch and placed it on the seat of the rocker.

  Napoleon’s ball-and-socket hip joints allowed his legs to bend at the hips so that he could sit with ease on the cushion. Then Ben bent one leg at the knee joint so that Napoleon’s foot rested on the ground. Gently Tricia and Chelsea lifted his other leg, bent the knee, and rested his ankle across the opposite leg.

  “That’s exactly how Mr. Leroy sits in that chair,” Mrs. Clancy said. “When I let him sit there,” she added. “When he doesn’t have a cup of coffee.”