Miss Daisy Is Crazy!

out?” Miss Daisy asked.
    “Certainly,” Principal Klutz said. “The more the merrier. And I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. If the kids in this school read a million pages, I will come to the big video-game night dressed in a gorilla suit.”
    “You’ve got a deal!” I said, rushing for-ward to shake Principal Klutz’s hand.
    In my head I was already hatching a plan.

     

As soon as I got home from school, I went up to my big sister Amy’s room.
    Amy is in fifth grade, so she knows lots of things.
    “You’ve got to help me!” I said. “If the school reads a million pages in books, Principal Klutz will put on a gorilla suit and let us turn the school into a video-game arcade!”
    “I would do anything to see that,” Amy said.
    Amy knows how to work the computer really well. She helped me make posters that said 
    LET’S TURN OUR SCHOOL INTO A VIDEO-GAME ARCADE! and
     LET’S TURN PRINCIPAL KLUTZ INTO A GORILLA!

    We tacked the posters up all over Main Street. Amy sent e-mails and instant messages to all the kids in the fifth grade. The next morning we tacked the posters up all over school. I passed them out to the kids I saw. Mrs. Roopy, the school librar-ian, said we could put up some posters in the library. Mr. Sacco, the custodian, said we could put some up in the lunchroom and the bathrooms. Ms. Hynde, the music teacher, said we could put some up in the music room.
    By the middle of the day, everyone in the school was reading like crazy! Kids were reading during lunch. Kids were reading during recess! Kids were plowing their way through books and then running to the school library to ask Mrs. Roopy if they could check out more. I read a book about frogs, and I don’t even care anything about frogs.
    Some of the teachers were starting to get mad, because kids were reading books when they were supposed to be doing other things.
    “Please put those books away,” Miss Daisy had to tell us. “It’s time for reading.” Miss Daisy said she was sorry that she wouldn’t be able to help us very much because she didn’t know how to read. But she was nice enough to draw a big mural in the hallway with a giant thermometer on it. Every time we read a lot of pages, she would make the temperature line on the thermometer go up. At the top of the thermometer were the words   One million.
    Soon kids were bursting into our room and yelling, “Mrs. Biggs’s class has read another five hundred pages!” 
    and “Miss Hasenfratz says to add another six hundred pages!”

    It was fun watching the temperature go up.
    At the end of a week, our school had read almost a half a million pages!

At the end of a week, our school had read almost a half a million pages!

     
     

“Boys and girls, today we have a very spe-cial and famous guest,” Miss Daisy said.
    “His name is Boomer Wiggins.”
    “Wow!” was the first thing everybody said.
    “Who’s he?” was the second thing everybody said.
    But I knew who Boomer Wiggins was.
    Because Boomer Wiggins was my hero. He was the quarterback of my favorite football team, the Chargers! Wow! A real football player right in our classroom! Miss Daisy told us that Boomer Wiggins had a daughter in fourth grade, and that’s why he was spending the day at our school.
    When Boomer Wiggins walked into the class, everybody gasped. He was really big and had so many muscles that they poked right against his shirt! We all crowded around him, and Boomer let us feel his arm muscles. I couldn’t even get my hands around them! Then Boomer picked up Emily with one hand!
    He was amazing. Then he gave each of us a little plastic football, and he signed his name on each one.
    “Does anybody have any questions?”  Boomer asked.
    “Do you like knocking guys on their butts?” I asked.

    Everybody laughed, even though I didn’t say anything that was funny. Miss Daisy said it was “butt,” not “butts,” because a person only has one butt. But I said a butt was divided into two halves, so really it could be “butts.” Miss Daisy said that was enough of that talk. I said she shouldn’t be com-plaining because she was the one who started it.
    “I don’t like knocking people down,” Boomer told us, “but sometimes we have to because it’s part of the game.”
    “Mr. Wiggins,” asked Miss Daisy, “is it true that football players are really dumb?” We all gasped. I was afraid Boomer Wiggins might knock Miss Daisy on her butt.
    “Excuse