Ms. Coco Is Loco!

  My Weird School #16

  Ms. Coco Is Loco!

  Dan Gutman

  Pictures by

  Jim Paillot

  To Emma

  Contents

  1 Chillin’ at the School Store

  2 National Poetry Month Is Dumb

  3 Sit Around and Do Nothing Month

  4 Shakespeare Was a Dumbhead

  5 My Secret Poetry Writing System

  6 The Kindergarten Trolls

  7 The Worst Poem in the History of the World

  8 Why Dead People Are Lucky

  9 Stalling for Time

  10 You Snooze, You Lose

  11 King of the School

  12 A Real Live Poet Who Isn’t Dead

  About the Author and the Illustrator

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Chillin’ at the School Store

  My name is A.J. and I hate school.

  The only cool part of Ella Mentry School is the school store. It’s a little room near the office where they sell stuff. Mostly they have pencils and pens and junk like that. They never have anything useful, like skateboards or video games. Still, it’s cool to buy stuff when you’re at school.

  The school store is open in the morning before the bell rings. The only problem is, I spent all my allowance over the weekend on a new football because some kid stole mine. So I didn’t even have a dime to buy anything at the school store. Bummer in the summer!

  “Guess what I bought with my own money?” this girl with curly brown hair named Andrea Young whispered to her crybaby friend Emily. Knowing Andrea, it was probably an encyclopedia.

  “What did you buy?” asked Emily.

  “An encyclopedia!” Andrea said, all excited. “It’s an encyclopedia for kids!”

  Ugh. Andrea loves reading and books and school and anything else that’s boring. She keeps a dictionary on her desk so she can look up words and show everybody how much she knows. Andrea is like a human filing cabinet.

  “You know what I’m going to do with my encyclopedia?” Andrea asked Emily.

  Knowing Andrea, she would probably read the whole thing in ABC order so she would know everything in the world.

  “I’m going to read it in ABC order,” Andrea bragged. “If I finish one letter every day, by the end of the month I’ll know everything! Won’t that be cool?”

  Yeah, cool like an oven. I wish a set of encyclopedias would fall on Andrea’s head.

  The bell rang and we all rushed to class. Our teacher, Miss Daisy, told us to put away our stuff and get ready for circle time. That’s when we sit around in a circle, so it has the perfect name.

  Suddenly the voice of the school secretary, Mrs. Patty, came over the loudspeaker.

  “Miss Daisy, please send Andrea and A.J. to Ms. Coco’s room.”

  “Oooooh!” my friend Ryan said. “A.J. and Andrea are going to Ms. Coco’s room again. They must be in love!”

  “When are you gonna get married?” asked my other friend Michael.

  If those guys weren’t my best friends, I would hate them.

  2

  National Poetry Month Is Dumb

  Me and Andrea walked down the hall to Ms. Coco’s room. She’s the gifted and talented teacher at Ella Mentry School. That doesn’t mean she’s gifted and talented. It means she teaches kids who are gifted and talented.

  Me and Andrea are the only ones in Miss Daisy’s class who are in the G and T program. Don’t ask me how I got in. The only talents I have are burping the alphabet and making farting noises with my armpits. But we all had to take a dumb test, and afterward Ms. Coco decided I was gifted and talented.

  I hate being gifted and talented. I don’t want to be a gifted and talented nerd like Andrea.

  “Guess what, Arlo?” Andrea asked, as we walked down the hall. She calls me by my real name because she knows I hate it.

  “Your butt,” I replied.

  (Any time anyone says “Guess what?” you should always say “Your butt.” That’s the first rule of being a kid.)

  “I’m taking a speed-reading class after school, so I can read faster,” Andrea bragged.

  Andrea takes classes in everything. If they gave a class in blowing your nose, she would take that class so she could get better at it.

  “Wow,” I said, “it must be wonderful being you.”

  That’s called sarcasm. It’s when you say exactly the opposite of what you really mean. Sarcasm is fun, especially when you’re talking to somebody you hate, like Andrea.

  “Arlo, did you know that aardvarks eat termites?” Andrea said. “And did you know that ants rarely live more than sixty days?”

  She must have been working on the letter A in her encyclopedia.

  “Sure,” I lied. “Any dumbhead knows that stuff.”

  We walked a million hundred miles until we got to the G and T room. Ms. Coco wasn’t there yet. She has posters of geniuses like Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison and the Beatles on the wall. And there are signs all over the place that say things like THINK!, CREATE!, and INVENT!

  Finally Ms. Coco came running in. She wears tons of makeup on her face and her hair is always in place. I guess that’s why she’s late a lot. It must take a lot of time to make her look good.

  “Hello!” she said to me and Andrea. “Do you like yellow Jell-O? I can play the cello. Are you mellow?”

  Ms. Coco is weird.

  “Why are you talking in rhyme?” asked Andrea.

  “Rhyme?” she said. “Is it a crime to talk in rhyme? I’d rather mime, but that takes more time.”

  “I get it!” Andrea said. “You’re talking in rhyme because it’s April. It’s National Poetry Month!”

  National Poetry Month?! You’ve gotta be kidding me. Poetry gets a whole month? I wouldn’t give poetry five minutes.

  How come there’s no National Skateboarding Month? Or National Video Games Month? It would be cool to go skateboarding and play video games all month instead of going to school.

  “I love poetry,” said Andrea, who loves everything teachers love. “I wrote a poem, and my mom put it on the refrigerator.”

  Andrea’s mom is weird. If she puts poems on the refrigerator, she probably puts food on Andrea’s notebooks.

  “If you ask me, there should be a National Sit Around and Do Nothing Month,” I suggested.

  “What a great idea, A.J.!” said Ms. Coco. “For homework I’d like each of you to write a poem. A.J., you can write yours about sitting around and doing nothing.”

  “But I was just joking!” I protested. “I hate poetry.”

  “Come on, A.J.,” said Ms. Coco. “You’re a poet and you don’t even know it.”

  That is totally not fair. I wanted to sit around and do nothing, not write a poem about sitting around and doing nothing. Poetry is dumb. And now I had extra homework to do.

  I wish I was in the U and U program—ungifted and untalented.

  3

  Sit Around and Do Nothing Month

  The next morning at the school store, they were selling cool pens that light up. I counted the coins in my pocket—just enough money to buy lunch and nothing else. Bummer in the summer! I wish I brought my lunch from home, like I did in the good old days. Then I could use my lunch money to buy a pen. But if I brought lunch from home, I wouldn’t have lunch money at all.

  Well, anyway, all I had was enough money for lunch. And if I didn’t eat lunch, I’d starve and die.

  When I got to Miss Daisy’s class, guess who poked his head in the door? Nobody! Because if you poked your head in a door, it would hurt. But Mr. Klutz poked his head in the doorway. He is our principal, and he has no hair. Mr. Klutz’s head is so shiny, you can see yourself in i
t. He must polish it or something.

  Mr. Klutz is nuts.

  “I have exciting news!” he said.

  “Mr. Klutz said he has an exciting nose,” I whispered to Neil Crouch, who we call Neil the nude kid even though he wears clothes.

  “April is National Poetry Month!” said Mr. Klutz. “I thought of a great way to celebrate. If the students of Ella Mentry School write a thousand poems in April, I’ll invite a real live poet to visit us. Isn’t that exciting?”

  “Yes!” yelled all the girls.

  “No!” yelled all the boys.

  A real live poet? I thought poets all died a long time ago.

  “How about five hundred poems?” Michael asked.

  “One thousand poems,” Mr. Klutz said. “That’s my final offer. Deal or no deal?”

  “Deal!” yelled all the girls.

  “No deal!” yelled all the boys.

  Mr. Klutz loves challenging us to see what we can accomplish.

  After he left, it was time for me and Andrea to go to Ms. Coco’s room.

  “Arlo, did you know that a beaver can hold its breath for five minutes?” Andrea asked as we walked down the hall. “And that bats sleep upside down in trees?”

  Ugh. She must have finished the letter B in her encyclopedia.

  “Sure,” I lied. “Any dumbhead knows that stuff.”

  Ms. Coco came running in just as we reached the G and T room.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I had to fix my hair.”

  “Why, was it broken?” I asked.

  “That’s mean!” said Andrea.

  “I think it’s clever,” said Ms. Coco. “To fix hair is to comb it, and you fix a machine when it breaks. A.J. thought creatively. That’s why I selected him for the gifted and talented program.”

  “Thank you!” I said, and then I stuck my tongue out at Andrea.

  “I’m so excited about National Poetry Month!” said Ms. Coco. “Did you two write your homework poems?”

  “I did!” Andrea said, all excited. “My poem is called ‘The Happy Hippo.’ I worked on it all night.”

  Andrea loves animals. She read her poem about some hippos that have a dumb tea party. It was totally lame.

  “Lovely,” said Ms. Coco when Andrea finished. “Let’s hear your poem, A.J.”

  So I read my poem:

  “I like to sit ’round and do nothing.

  Just sit and do nothing at all.

  I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to walk.

  I don’t want to play with a ball.

  I don’t want to eat or play with my feet

  Or work up a sweat or fly in a jet.

  If I could just sit and do nothing

  Just sit there and clear my head

  I’d be the happiest person

  Except that, of course, I’d be dead.”

  I wasn’t sure if Ms. Coco would like the ending or not. Teachers don’t usually go for dead stuff. But when I looked up, there were tears running down her cheeks.

  “That’s the saddest poem I’ve ever heard!” she said, grabbing a tissue to wipe her face.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “A.J., your poem was simple, yet it was so moving. So honest. So free.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about. It was just a dumb poem. I wrote it in five minutes during the commercials while I watched TV.

  “What about my poem?” asked Andrea.

  “Yours was nice too, Andrea,” said Ms. Coco. Then she took another tissue and started crying again.

  Miss Smarty Pants Know-It-All crossed her arms and looked all mad. I guess she was angry because Ms. Coco liked my poem better than her dumb hippo poem.

  Well, nah-nah-nah boo-boo on her.

  4

  Shakespeare Was a Dumbhead

  When I got to school the next day, there was a big NATIONAL POETRY MONTH tote board on the front lawn. It said the kids of Ella Mentry School wrote two hundred poems already!

  I didn’t get it. I mean, I could see writing lots of poems if we were going to get a chocolate party or a video games night or something cool. But to have a poet visit our school? No thanks.

  After we pledged the allegiance, Miss Daisy said our homework for April was to write one poem everyday. Ms.

  Coco was going to publish a National Poetry Month book with some of our best poems in it.

  “Isn’t that exciting?” Miss Daisy asked.

  “Yes!” yelled all the girls.

  “No!” yelled all the boys. Just the thought of writing something every day made me wrinkle up my nose like I smelled something bad.

  “What’s the matter, A.J.?” asked Miss Daisy.

  “I hate poetry,” I said.

  “‘Hate’ is not a nice word,” Miss Daisy said. “You shouldn’t say that.”

  “Then I strongly dislike poetry,” I said. “I despise poetry. I detest it. I loathe it. I—”

  “That’s enough, A.J.,” said Miss Daisy.

  Just then, a poem popped into my brain:

  I hate poetry.

  Poetry is dumb.

  It’s hard to write poems

  When you’re chewing gum.

  Genius poems like that come into my brain all the time. I can’t stop them! I guess that’s why I’m in the gifted and talented program.

  I was going to think up another verse, but it was time for me and Andrea to go see Ms. Coco again.

  “Arlo, did you know that camels have three eyelids?” Andrea said as we walked to the G and T room. “And cats see six times better than humans at night. And all clams start out as males, but some of them become females later.”

  Ugh. She must have finished the letter C in her encyclopedia.

  “Any dumbhead knows that stuff,” I said.

  When we got to Ms. Coco’s room, she was crying again. Nobody had even read her a poem. I figured Ms. Coco’s dog must have died or something.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Andrea.

  “When I woke up this morning, I saw the most beautiful sunrise,” Ms. Coco said. “I don’t know what came over me. It just made me want to cry.”

  Man, that lady will cry over anything. She’s worse than Emily.

  “What’s so sad about a sunrise?” I asked.

  “Wouldn’t a beautiful sunrise make you cry, A.J.?” Ms. Coco asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “A sunrise could make me cry,” said Andrea, who always agrees with everything grown-ups say.

  “I might cry if I woke up and the sun didn’t rise,” I said.

  Then the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened. Ms. Coco started singing!

  “‘Feelings,’” she sang, “‘nothing more than feelings…’”

  Ms. Coco is loco!

  Andrea must have known the song too, because she started singing along with Ms. Coco. It was horrible. Neither of them is gifted or talented when it comes to singing, believe me. I thought I was gonna die.

  Finally, they finished the song.

  “A.J., I want you to explore your feelings,” said Ms. Coco. “It will make you a better poet.”

  “Boys don’t have feelings,” Andrea said. “They just like to play sports and punch each other.”

  “Of course boys have feelings,” said Ms. Coco. “They just hide them sometimes. You have feelings, don’t you, A.J.?”

  “Sure I do,” I said. “The other day some kid stole my football, and I felt like punching him.”

  Andrea rolled her eyes.

  “I have an idea,” Ms. Coco said. “Let’s write poems about feelings!”

  Ugh! What is her problem? Every time I say anything about anything, Ms. Coco makes me write a poem about it.

  She gave us each a piece of paper and a pencil. I didn’t have any genius ideas. So this is what I wrote:

  My feelings are written on the ceiling.

  But the paint is peeling off the ceiling.

  So my feelings are not that revealing.

  It’s hard to have no feeling
s,

  But I’m dealing.

  At that point, I ran out of words that rhymed with “feelings,” so I stopped writing.

  “You know, A.J.,” Ms Coco said as she took a book off her shelf, “poems don’t have to rhyme.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No,” Ms. Coco said. “Listen to this.” And she read a poem from the book:

  “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

  To throw a perfume on the violet,

  To smooth the ice, or add another hue

  Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light”

  Ms. Coco sighed.

  “That was beautiful!” said Andrea. “Who wrote it?”

  “William Shakespeare,” replied Ms. Coco.

  “Who’s he?” I asked.

  “Only the most famous writer in the world!” Andrea said.

  “Well, he was a dumbhead,” I said. “That poem made no sense at all.”

  “Poems don’t always have to make sense,” said Ms. Coco. “Sometimes they just paint a word picture.”

  What?! Poems don’t have to rhyme and they don’t even have to make sense? That just proves my point—poetry is dumb. You could put a bunch of words in any old order and call them a poem.

  Suddenly I got the greatest idea in the history of the world.

  But I’m not going to tell you what it was.

  Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. But you’ll have to read the next chapter.

  Ha-ha. In your face!

  5

  My Secret Poetry Writing System

  I knew you’d keep reading.

  When I got home, I looked through my closet for the big box of spelling flash cards my grandma gave me for my birthday.