A Royal Pain in the Burp #15 Read online

  For Ian and Mandy

  (young branches on an old family tree!)—NK

  For Mr. OB and other inspiring teachers—AB

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 USA

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  Text copyright © 2015 by Nancy Krulik. Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Aaron Blecha. 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) LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-698-41210-1

  Version_1

  Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  About the Author and Illustrator

  “I want everyone to enjoy a big piece of my Monday-morning surprise,” Mrs. Kelly told the fourth-graders as she put plates on each of their desks. “It’s monkey bread! And it’s delicious.”

  George Brown had never seen anything like this. It did not look delicious. It looked lumpy and brown.

  “Is this bread made from monkeys?” George asked nervously.

  Everyone in the class started laughing.

  “No,” Mrs. Kelly assured him. “It’s made from flour, cinnamon, and sugar. Many people bake monkey bread, but this is my grandmother’s special recipe.”

  “Why is it called monkey bread?” George asked.

  “I don’t really know,” Mrs. Kelly admitted. “But some people say monkey bread got its name because it resembles the bark of the monkey puzzle tree.”

  “What’s a monkey puzzle?” Max asked. “Is that like a jigsaw puzzle?”

  Mrs. Kelly walked over to her computer and posted a picture on the smart board.

  “This is a monkey puzzle tree,” Mrs. Kelly said, pointing to the picture of a tall evergreen tree with grayish-brown bark.

  George looked at the picture. The tree didn’t look very much like the brown lump on the plate in front of him.

  “Monkey bread’s delicious, dude,” said George’s friend Alex. “Try it.”

  George wasn’t sure. But Alex had never lied to him. So George picked off a piece and took a bite.

  “Mmmm . . . ,” George said. “That is good.”

  “Told ya,” Alex replied. He took a big bite of his monkey bread.

  “This has raisins in it,” Sage said. “I’ve never had monkey bread with raisins before.”

  “That’s how my grandmother made it in the bakery she ran,” Mrs. Kelly explained.

  “Wow, I wish my grandmother ran a bakery,” George said. “Then I could get free cookies and cakes all the time.”

  “I did,” Mrs. Kelly said. “I was very lucky. Growing up, many of my relatives were in the food business. Like my great-uncle Edgar. He ran an ostrich farm. So I got free ostrich eggs. Those eggs were huge. You could make an omelet that would feed three people with . . .”

  George wanted to pay attention to what his teacher was saying. He really did. But he couldn’t. He was too focused on what his belly was saying.

  Bing-bong. Ping-pong.

  George’s tummy was making all kinds of noises. It was full of bubbles. Not just any kind of bubbles. Strong, crazy bubbles. The kind of bubbles that slam-danced against his stomach and boomeranged off his bladder.

  Bubbles that could cause a lot of trouble if they burst out of him.

  George had to keep himself from burping. Because if the burp got loose, there was no telling what horrible thing it would make him do. After all, the burp had gotten him in trouble plenty of times before.

  It all started when George and his family had moved to Beaver Brook. George’s dad was in the army, and his family moved around a lot. So George knew that first days at school could be pretty rotten. But this first day was the rottenest.

  In his old school, George had been the class clown. But George had promised himself that things were going to be different at Edith B. Sugarman Elementary School. No more pranks. No more goofing on teachers when their backs were turned.

  Unfortunately, no one at George’s new school even noticed the non-funny new kid. They acted like he was invisible.

  That night, George’s parents took him out to Ernie’s Ice Cream Emporium. While they were sitting outside and George was finishing his root beer float, a shooting star flashed across the sky. So George made a wish.

  I want to make kids laugh—but not get into trouble.

  Unfortunately, the star was gone before George could finish the wish. So only half came true—the first half.

  A minute later, George had a funny feeling in his belly. It was like there were hundreds of tiny bubbles bouncing around in there. The bubbles ping-ponged their way into his chest, and bing-bonged their way up into his throat. And then . . .

  George let out a big burp. A huge burp. A SUPER burp!

  The super burp was loud, and it was magic.

  Suddenly George lost control of his arms and legs. It was like they had minds of their own. His hands grabbed straws and stuck them up his nose, making him look like a walrus. His feet jumped up on the table and started dancing the hokey pokey. Everyone at Ernie’s Emporium started laughing—except George’s parents, who were covered in the ice cream he’d kicked over while he was dancing.

  The burp came back over and over again. And every time it did, it made a mess of things. A mess George got in trouble for. Which was why George couldn’t let that burp burst out of him now!

  But the burp really wanted to come out and play.

  Cling clang! Already the bubbles were kicking at his kidneys and climbing up his colon.

  Twing twang! The bubbles twisted around his teeth and tickled his tongue.

  And then . . .

  Uh-oh! The magical super burp was free. Now whatever the burp wanted to do, George had to do. And what the burp wanted to do was monkey around.

  His mouth started making monkey sounds. “Ook, ook, ook!”

  His arms started scratching at his fur . . . uh . . . er, skin.

  His back curved. And his feet started bouncing up and down.

  “George is getting all weird again!” Louie Farley told Mrs. Kelly.

  George frowned. Louie was such a tattletale. Not that Mrs. Kelly had to be told. It was hard to miss all that ooking, scratching, and bouncing.

  “Ook! Ook!” George said.

  His hands stopped scratching just long enough to grab a big h
unk of monkey bread from Mrs. Kelly’s desk. Then he shoved the bread into his mouth.

  “George, that’s rude!” Mrs. Kelly scolded. “Sit down now!”

  George wanted to sit down. He really did. But George wasn’t in charge. The burp was. And it wanted to go ape!

  “Ook! Ook!”

  Scratch, scratch.

  Pop!

  Just then, George felt something burst in his belly. All the air rushed out of him. The super burp was gone. But George was still there, all bent over with his hands scratching his sides.

  “Oooh. George is gonna get it now,” Louie told his pals, Max and Mike.

  Mrs. Kelly sighed. She said, “I know monkey bread is delicious. Especially the first time you try it. But that’s no excuse for just grabbing it, George.”

  George sat down and opened his mouth to say “I’m sorry.” And that’s exactly what came out.

  Mrs. Kelly nodded. Then she continued with the lesson. “My grandmother and my great-uncle Edgar were fascinating people. But I’ll bet you don’t know why I told you about them.”

  The kids all stared at her. They had no idea.

  “Everyone has interesting people in their family,” Mrs. Kelly explained. “And you’re going to learn about your relatives when we study our family trees in social studies this week.”

  “Social studies?” Max asked. “Didn’t we just study trees in science?”

  “Family trees aren’t real trees,” Mrs. Kelly explained. “They’re your family history. I want each of you to research your family tree to find someone who did something unexpected or exciting.”

  “What if everyone in our family tree is boring?” George asked.

  “I’ll bet there’s someone in your family who did something surprising,” Mrs. Kelly assured him. “And you’re going to get to tell everyone in Beaver Brook about it on Friday night during our Family Tree Festival Assembly.”

  “How are we going to fit everyone from Beaver Brook in the auditorium?” Mike asked.

  “We’re not,” Mrs. Kelly assured him. “Your parents will be invited to come to the assembly. Everyone else can watch on TV at home. A reporter from Channel Forty-Seven News will be there to film your reports for a special they’re doing on family trees.”

  That got George’s attention. TV was a huge deal.

  “Wow!” Julianna exclaimed. “That’s the news my family watches.”

  “Mine too,” Sage said. “I love the way they make little frowny faces on the raindrops during the weather report.”

  “I’m going to have to get a haircut if I’m going to be on TV,” Louie said. “I want to look good.”

  George snickered. It would take more than a haircut to make Louie look good.

  “How are we going to find out about our ancestors?” Alex asked Mrs. Kelly.

  “You can start online,” Mrs. Kelly explained. “I will show you a website that locates documents that tell you where your relatives came from and what jobs they had.”

  “I don’t need a website to tell me my relatives had important jobs that made a lot of money,” Louie said. “The Farleys are all important—and rich.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Mrs. Kelly warned Louie. “You never know what you may find out when you look into your history. Strange branches can be found on family trees.”

  “Who knows what kind of strange things are hanging from George’s tree,” George heard Louie whisper to Max and Mike.

  Alex must have heard it, too, because he whispered to George, “Louie’s a jerk.”

  George laughed. “Yeah. They could have named beef jerky after the people on the Farley family tree,” he whispered back to Alex.

  Then he shook his head. That couldn’t be right. Because beef jerky was pretty good. And there was nothing good about Louie Farley.

  “I don’t think my family tree is going to be filled with important rich people like Louie says his is,” George told Alex and Chris as the boys walked into Chris’s bedroom later that afternoon. The boys had decided to start researching their family-tree projects together using Chris’s computer.

  “You never know,” Alex replied. “Where did your family come from?”

  George shrugged. “Our last house was in Cherrydale.”

  “No, I mean where did your family come from originally?” Alex explained. “Before they lived in America.”

  “I don’t know,” George admitted.

  “I bet we’ll find out a lot of cool things about our families,” Chris said.

  George wished he could be as excited as Chris was about this project. But he wasn’t. He had a feeling that on Friday night, he would be standing in front of a whole room of people, talking about how boring his family was.

  “You guys mind if I go first?” Chris asked.

  “Go ahead,” Alex said.

  Chris hurried over to the computer. He went to the website and typed in his name, his birthday, and the place he was born. Then he hit Send and sat back.

  A moment later, a list of people with Chris’s last name popped up on the screen. Chris looked for the names he recognized, like his parents, his grandparents, and his aunt. He put checks next to their names and hit Send again.

  Now a long list of Chris’s relatives popped up on the screen. People he had never heard of, going all the way back to the 1800s! The list showed their birthdates, where they were born, whom they were married to, how many kids they had, and what they did for a living.

  “Check it out!” Chris shouted. “I had a great-great-great-grandfather named Larry, who was a plumber! That’s perfect. I can talk about my great-great-great-grandfather and my Toiletman comic books at the assembly. I might even add a Larry the Plumber character to my newest comic.”

  George laughed. Chris was so proud of his Toiletman comic books. He even had a Toiletman costume, complete with a plunger sword and a toilet-seat shield. He wore the costume whenever he could—in the school talent show, to a comic-book convention, and, of course, on Halloween. Even though Halloween had been a while ago, the costume was still sitting in the corner of his room.

  Chris pulled out a piece of paper and started drawing his new character, Larry the Plumber. Next, Alex sat at the computer and typed in his information. “Well, that’s interesting,” he said finally.

  “Do you have a whole lot of scientists in your family?” George asked him. He figured there had to be. After all, Alex was a science fanatic. That had to come from somewhere.

  “No,” Alex said. “But my great-uncle Samuel was a hypnotist.”

  “A what?” Chris asked.

  “A hypnotist,” Alex repeated. “One of those guys who puts people to sleep and then makes them do things by the power of suggestion.”

  “I once saw a guy do that on TV,” George said. “He made a lady cluck like a chicken every time she heard a bell ring. It was hilarious.”

  “I wonder if I have time to learn how to hypnotize people before Friday,” Alex said. “That would make a really cool presentation.”

  “If anyone can do it, you can,” George assured him.

  “Okay, George. Your turn,” Alex said.

  George sat down at the computer and entered his information.

  A whole list of relatives came up. George checked off the names he recognized, and waited. Then suddenly, his family tree appeared on the screen.

  George scanned the list for someone who had done something interesting. There were some family members who were in the military and a few teachers. There was a third cousin once removed who owned a Laundromat. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that would be cool to talk about at the assembly.

  Suddenly, George saw something strange pop up on his list. Something he could never have imagined. His eyes opened wide. He read it again. And again.

  That couldn’t be right.

  “Hey
, you guys,” he called out. “Does this say what I think it says?”

  Chris and Alex peered over George’s shoulder.

  “Whoa!” Alex exclaimed.

  “Wow!” Chris added. “You’re probably the only kid in the whole grade with a relative like that. Maybe even in the whole school.”

  “Or the whole town,” Alex added. “I mean, it’s not like there are that many people who are related to real live royalty.”

  “You think it’s right?” George asked.

  “Mrs. Kelly gave us the website,” Alex told him. “It has to be reliable.”

  “That means it’s true.” George gasped. “I’m really related to His Majesty, King Stanley of Arfendonia.”

  “Yup,” Alex said. “According to this, you are his seventeenth cousin twice removed on your mother’s side.”

  “Wow!” George said.

  “Does that mean you could be king of Arfendonia one day?” Chris asked.

  “I don’t know,” George replied.

  “You’re pretty far removed,” Alex told him. “But it’s possible. You have royal Arfendonian blood running through your veins, dude.”

  “Where’s Arfendonia?” Chris asked George.

  George shook his head. “I have no idea. I never heard of it.”

  “Me either,” Alex admitted. “But we can look it up.”

  George typed Arfendonia into the search engine. Almost immediately a map came up on the screen. At first, all George saw was a lot of blue water off the coast of northern Europe. But when he zoomed in, he saw a small black dot in the middle of the water with the word Arfendonia next to it. The word was bigger than the dot.

  “Well, now we know where my family comes from,” George said.

  “What does it say about it?” Chris asked him.

  “‘Arfendonia,’” George read. “‘A small island located in the North Atlantic Ocean.’”

  “What else does it say?” Chris asked.

  “That’s it,” George told him.