Don't Be Such a Turkey! Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Eat Like They Did at the First Thanksgiving!

  About the Author

  About the Illustrators

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Text copyright © 2010 by Nancy Krulik. Illustrations copyright © 2010 by

  John & 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.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010003992

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44242-5

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Pepper, who gets the leftover turkey.—N.K.

  For New York City—where magic happened and our wish came true!—J&W

  Chapter 1

  “Good morrow, young ones,” Mr. Guthrie greeted the kids of class 4A on Monday morning. “How do you fare on this fine day?”

  Katie Carew waved hi as she came into the classroom. Her teacher was wearing a white shirt, a flat black hat, and short black pants. Katie wasn’t totally surprised that Mr. Guthrie was dressed like that. Her teacher was always dressing up in weird costumes. This was nothing compared to the time he’d put on ears and a tail to dress like a mouse when the class was learning about animals that only came out at night. Or when he’d greeted the kids dressed as a daisy, with white petals all around his face, when they were studying flowering plants. Now that had been really strange.

  “What’s with the shorts, Mr. G.?” Kadeem Carter asked the teacher.

  “Do you mean my breeches?” Mr. G. asked. “The men all wear breeches in our village.”

  Katie had a feeling Mr. G. didn’t mean Cherrydale when he said our village. So what exactly was he talking about?

  “Whoa! Check it out!” Kevin Camilleri said as he walked into the classroom. Katie looked to where Kevin was pointing. There was a huge gray rock in the corner of the room. Well, actually it wasn’t a real rock. It was a piece of Styrofoam painted gray to look like a giant rock.

  Now Katie knew what was going on. Thanksgiving was only a week and a half away. So that must mean . . .

  “That’s Plymouth Rock!” Katie exclaimed. “We must be studying the Pilgrims!”

  “Huzzah!” Mr. G. shouted excitedly. “Good thinking, Katie Kazoo.”

  Katie giggled. She loved when her teacher used the way-cool nickname her friend George had given her back in third grade.

  “But we are not only studying the Pilgrims,” Mr. G. continued. “The Wampanoags will also be part of our learning adventure.”

  “The Wampa-whats?” Kevin asked.

  “The Wampanoags,” Mandy Banks told him. “They were the Native Americans who lived near the Pilgrims.”

  “Huzzah, Mandy!” Mr. G. cheered.

  Katie laughed. Huzzah was a very funny-sounding word. It was also very cheerful. She figured it had to mean congratulations or something like that.

  “Can we decorate our beanbags now?” Emma Stavros asked Mr. G.

  “Of course,” Mr. G. said. “Go forth and decorate.”

  Katie couldn’t wait to start decorating her beanbag chair. That was always the most fun part of starting a new learning adventure. Mr. G. called all lessons learning adventures. And he let the kids sit in beanbags instead of at desks so they could be comfortable while they were learning. Mr. G. wasn’t at all like other teachers.

  Katie went over to the crafts section of the classroom and grabbed some pretty feathers.

  “Are you making a turkey for your beanbag, Katie?” Kevin asked her.

  Katie shook her head. “It’s going to be a Native American headdress.”

  “Katie would never make a turkey,” Emma Weber told Kevin. “She doesn’t eat turkey.”

  Katie nodded. That was true. She was a vegetarian. Her Thanksgiving dinner was going to be mashed potatoes and tofu that was made to look like turkey slices. Her dad called it tofurkey.

  “I’ll eat anything,” Kevin said. “In fact, I’m going to turn my beanbag into a massive Thanksgiving dinner.” He took a piece of red tissue paper and rolled it up into a ball. “Starting with this tomato.”

  Katie giggled. Kevin was the tomato-eating king of the fourth grade. No meal was complete for him unless there were tomatoes. She bet he even ate tomatoes for dessert!

  Kadeem looked up from the Mayflower boat he was building with construction paper on his beanbag. “Hey, do you guys know why the turkey crossed the road?” he asked.

  “Why?” Andrew Epstein asked.

  “Because it was the chicken’s day off,” Kadeem answered. He started laughing at his own joke. Then he got quiet and looked sad.

  Katie knew why Kadeem was sad. Usually when he told a joke, his friend George would tell one right back. And then Kadeem would tell one. They would go back and forth. Mr. G. called it a Kadeem-George joke-off.

  But George and his family had moved away. Now Kadeem had no one to joke with. Everybody missed George.

  Then, suddenly, Emma W. began to giggle. “Hey, Kadeem, if the Pilgrims were alive today, do you know what they’d be famous for?” she asked.

  “What?” Kadeem asked.

  “Their age!” Emma W. said. She burst out laughing. So did everyone else. That was pretty funny. The Pilgrims would definitely be very old if they were still alive!

  Katie stared at Emma W. in amazement. Usually she was so quiet. But now, here she was telling a joke in front of the whole class. Amazing!

  “Oh yeah?” Kadeem said, sounding much happier now that he had someone to tell jokes with. “Well, if April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?”

/>   “Pilgrims,” Emma W. told him. “That’s such an old joke, I bet the Pilgrims told it to each other on the boat!”

  Wow! A Kadeem-Emma W. joke-off. Who would have thought that could happen? Of course, just about anything could happen in class 4A.

  “Hurry up and decorate, ye young dudes,” Mr. G. said with a smile. “I have a special surprise planned.”

  “What’s the surprise?” Emma S. asked Mr. G.

  “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise,” Mr. G. said. “But here’s a hint. It involves sticks and strings.”

  Katie had no idea what that meant. Neither did anyone else. When you had a teacher like Mr. G., a stick and a string could be for anything!

  Chapter 2

  “Okay, everyone, grab a stick,” Mr. G. said as he dumped a big pile of sticks in the middle of the field behind the school.

  Katie picked one up. A long, vinelike string was knotted to the stick at one end. The other end of the string had been tied into a loop.

  “What are these for?” Kevin asked Mr. G.

  “Good question,” Mr. G. said. “They’re for fun.”

  Katie stared at her stick. It didn’t look like much fun.

  “It’s a game,” Mr. G. explained. “You toss the ring end of the rope in the air and try to catch it with the stick.”

  One by one the kids tried the game. Katie tossed the ringed end of the rope up, and then aimed the stick underneath. Oops. Not even close.

  “This is hard,” Kadeem said as he tossed his ringed rope.

  “I did it!” Emma S. shouted excitedly.

  “Me too!” Andy Epstein cheered.

  “Me three!” Mandy announced to the class.

  “Almost,” Emma W. said. She tossed her rope in the air again for another try.

  Katie didn’t say anything. She was too busy focusing on catching the rope ring. She tossed it up, aimed her stick, and . . .

  “I got it!” she shouted. “Huzzah!”

  Mr. G. laughed. “Huzzah, indeed!” he cheered.

  Tossing the rope ring up and catching it with the stick was fun. But Katie still didn’t understand one thing.

  “What does this game have to do with Thanksgiving, Mr. G.?” she asked.

  “The game is called hoop stick,” Mr. G. explained. “And it was a game Wampanoag children used to play. It taught them important skills.”

  “What’s so important about catching a string with a stick?” Kevin asked.

  “It helps develop hand-eye coordination,” Mr. G. said. “That was important to the Wampanoags. They used bows and arrows when they were hunting their food. They needed to have good aim.”

  Katie frowned. She was sure glad they were catching string instead of hunting. She could never imagine hunting. But she figured the Wampanoags had to hunt to live. They probably didn’t have tofurkey back then.

  “This is the kind of lesson I like,” Kevin said.

  “Me too,” Emma W. said. She tossed her ring up in the air. “Did it!” she cheered.

  “I wouldn’t even mind doing hoop stick homework,” Kadeem said. “I wish I was a Wampanoag kid.”

  Katie gulped. Kadeem had just made a wish. That was soooo not good.

  “You do not!” Katie shouted at Kadeem. “You do not wish anything!”

  Everyone stopped tossing and catching, and stared right at Katie.

  “What’s up with you, Katie Kazoo?” Kadeem asked her.

  Katie didn’t know what to say. She knew wishes could be bad things. She also knew she couldn’t tell her friends why. They wouldn’t believe her, even if she did.

  It had all started back in third grade on one terrible, horrible, miserable day. First, Katie had missed catching the football and lost a game for her team. Then she’d fallen in the mud and ruined her brand-new, favorite jeans. And then she’d stood up in front of the whole class, and let out the biggest, loudest burp in the history of Cherrydale Elementary School. A real record breaker. Talk about embarrassing.

  That night, Katie had wished that she could be anyone but herself. There must have been a shooting star overhead when Katie made her wish because the next day the magic wind arrived.

  The magic wind was a wild, powerful tornado that blew only around Katie. It was so strong that it was able to blow her right out of her own body, and into someone else’s. One . . . two . . . switcheroo!

  The first time the magic wind came, it turned her into Speedy, the class hamster. Katie spent the whole morning stuck in a cage, going around and around on a hamster wheel and eating wooden chew sticks. Those sticks tasted awful—even worse than the food in the school cafeteria!

  Katie was really glad when the magic wind returned later that day and changed her back into herself. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the magic wind and its switcheroos. The wind came back again and again. Sometimes it turned her into animals, sometimes into grown-ups, and sometimes into other kids, like Emma W. or Kevin.

  The time Katie had turned into Kevin had been especially bad. The magic wind came right in the middle of his karate tournament. Katie tried to break a board with her foot, and fell on her rear end, in front of the whole audience. That had been really embarrassing—especially for Kevin.

  Another time, the magic wind switcherooed Katie into Louie, the owner of the pizzeria at the Cherrydale Mall. Katie didn’t know anything about making pizza. What a mess that had been!

  And then there was the time the wind came and switcherooed Katie into her favorite author, Nellie Farrow. It happened right before Nellie was supposed to talk to the fourth grade about her new book. The trouble was, Katie hadn’t read the book yet. Because of Katie, Nellie had looked like a fool in front of her fans!

  As far as Katie was concerned, wishes caused nothing but trouble. But of course she couldn’t tell her friends that. Still, she had to say something. Everyone in the class was staring at her.

  “Look, Kadeem,” Katie told him finally. “Being a Wampanoag in Pilgrim times wasn’t all fun. They had to hunt for their own food and sew their own clothes. It wasn’t like they had a mall nearby where they could buy everything.”

  “That’s very true, Katie,” Mr. G. told her. “The Wampanoag Indians didn’t have it easy. Neither did the Pilgrims. In fact, you guys are going to find out just what life was like back then.”

  “We are?” Andy asked. “How?”

  “We’re going on a very special field trip,” Mr. G. said.

  “Back in time?” Mandy asked.

  The kids all laughed. But Mr. G. didn’t. “Sort of,” he told Mandy. “It will feel like we’ve gone back in time. On Thursday, we’re going to visit the Good Morrow Village.”

  “What’s that?” Kadeem asked.

  “The Good Morrow Village is a living museum,” Mr. G. explained. “It’s a pretend village from the year 1627. It looks a lot like Plymouth looked when the Pilgrims and Wampanoags had the first Thanksgiving. The village is filled with actors playing the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. They’re going to show us what life was like in 1627.”

  “Why is it called Good Morrow?” Katie asked Mr. G.

  “Because good morrow is how the Pilgrims said hello,” her teacher explained. “And these people will be welcoming us to a time and place very different than how we live today.”

  Wow! Katie was very excited. This could possibly be the very best field trip ever! It was too bad she had to wait until Thursday to go.

  Not that Katie was wishing the field trip was tomorrow or anything. She knew better than to do that!

  Chapter 3

  “I don’t know what I’m most thankful for,” Katie’s best friend Suzanne Lock said as the fourth-graders left school at the end of the day. She pulled a mirror out of her backpack. “I’m thankful for how big my eyes are, and how curly my hair is. And of course I have a really great smile. It’s so hard to choose.”

  Katie sighed. Suzanne was definitely missing the point of Thanksgiving time.

  “I’m thankful for all the fun thi
ngs that happen this time of year,” Katie said. “Like the town bonfire.”

  “I think it’s so nice that the whole town gets together the night before the Thanksgiving Day football game,” Emma W. agreed. “Lacey says the town bonfire really gets the team psyched up.”

  Katie nodded. Lacey would know. Emma W.’s big sister was in high school and friendly with guys on the football team.

  “I love the corn on the cob that they cook on the bonfire,” Kevin said.

  Suzanne gave him a funny look. “I thought you liked tomatoes,” she said.

  Kevin smiled. “A guy can’t live on just tomatoes.”

  Katie said, “I bet the Wampanoags ate a lot of corn.”

  “We’re going to find out,” Emma W. said. “I’m really thankful for that field trip. It sounds amazing.”

  “Maybe we should call the holiday Fanksgiving,” Kadeem joked.

  “Why would we call it that?” Katie asked him.

  “Because everything we’re thankful for starts with F,” he explained. “Fire, food, football, and field trips.”

  “Don’t forget family,” Katie pointed out.

  “And friends,” Emma W. added.

  “Well, I’m thankful for my new dress,” Suzanne said. “That doesn’t begin with an F. My mom bought it for me to wear to Thanksgiving dinner at my grandma’s house. Did I tell you about it? It’s got fall colors in it. Orange, red, yellow, and brown. And the sleeves are ...”

  “Um . . . I gotta run,” Kevin said. “I don’t want to be late for karate practice.”

  “I’ll leave with you,” Emma W. said. “I have to help my mom take care of my brothers.”

  “Hey, wait for me,” Kadeem added. “I have to . . . well . . . I just have to go!”

  Katie sighed. The other kids were really just in a rush to get away from Suzanne. None of them cared a lot about what her new Thanksgiving dress looked like.