Ms. Hannah Is Bananas! Read online

  I was going to tell Andrea that she was the one who had a problem. But I didn’t. I wanted that candy bar.

  “You know, everything isn’t art,” Andrea said. “Some things are garbage. Maybe Ms. Hannah became an art teacher because she couldn’t throw anything away. She might be a sick, sick woman who needs help.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” Ryan said.

  “We’ve got to help her!” said Emily.

  “What can we do?” asked Michael.

  “I’ve got an idea!” said Emily. “Why don’t we sneak into the art room during recess and clean it up? When Ms. Hannah sees how neat and clean everything is, she will realize she has a problem.”

  “That’s a great idea!” Andrea said.

  It didn’t sound like such a great idea to me. Cleaning things up was no fun at all. I don’t like cleaning my room at home. I sure didn’t want to clean up the art room. But I didn’t want to get into an argument with Andrea either. If we had a fight, I wouldn’t get my candy bar.

  After we finished lunch, the five of us snuck down the hall to the art room.

  Andrea was right. The place was a big mess. That’s when I came up with the greatest idea in the history of the world.

  “You know what?” I said. “Instead of cleaning this place, we should mess it up even worse.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” Emily asked.

  “If we really mess it up bad, Ms. Hannah will be so shocked that she will realize she has a problem.”

  It sounded like a genius idea to me. Cleaning isn’t fun at all, but messing things up is lots of fun.

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, A.J.,” Andrea said.

  “Sure it’s a good idea,” I said.

  “Trust me, A.J. It’s not a good idea.”

  Andrea thinks she knows everything. Well, she doesn’t know everything.

  “I’m not cleaning this place up,” I said. “I’d rather go outside for recess.”

  “You promised you would help,” Andrea said.

  “I did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “I hate you, A.J.!”

  That’s when Andrea did the dumbest thing in the history of the world. She pushed me.

  If I knew she was going to do something dumb like that, I could have gotten ready for it. But how was I to know she was going to do something dumb like push me?

  My foot must have slipped or something, because I fell backward.

  Right behind me was Ms. Hannah’s newspaper ball. When I fell backward, I landed on top of the ball.

  The ball rolled. I rolled on top of it.

  “Watch out!” Emily screamed.

  My foot hit Andrea’s butterfly mobile that was hanging from the ceiling. The butterfly mobile landed on my head.

  On the floor behind the ball were a bunch of cans of paint. I tried to get out of the way, but I couldn’t. When I hit the ground, I hit the paint first.

  “You stupid dumbhead!” Andrea shouted. “You crushed my butterflies!”

  “You pushed me into them!”

  “I did not! You fell on them on purpose!”

  I got up off the floor. Paint and butterflies were all over me. Red. Yellow. Blue. Green. It was cool.

  “Hey, look!” I said. “Art is everywhere.” Ryan and Michael laughed.

  “How can you make jokes at a time like this?” Andrea said. “You ruined my mobile! Now I won’t win the contest!”

  “You’re going to be in big trouble, A.J.,” Emily said.

  “Somebody’s coming,” Ryan said.

  “Everybody shut up!”

  That’s when the door opened. Ms. Hannah and Mr. Klutz came in. I was standing there with paint and Andrea’s stupid butterflies hanging all over me.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Mr. Klutz asked. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I had to think fast.

  “It’s…performance art,” I said.

  Everybody looked at me for like a million hundred seconds.

  “Yeah,” Andrea finally said. “It’s friendship performance art. A.J. and I made it together.”

  Ms. Hannah walked around me and looked me over. One of the butterflies slid down my head and stopped at the end of my nose.

  “It’s Connecticut friendship performance art,” I said.

  “I think it’s fabulous!” Ms. Hannah said. “It is so very creative. I believe the winners of the art contest are Andrea and A.J.!”

  Everybody cheered and clapped. Mr. Klutz reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two candy bars.

  “I’m so pleased to see the two of you are getting along so well together,” he said. “I promised you each a little something if you could go a day without fighting. Here is your prize. Congratulations!”

  The candy bar tasted great. Maybe art isn’t so stupid after all.

  After it was all over, I still hated Andrea. Andrea still hated me. Ms. Hannah still had a big problem with collecting garbage. I said I would try to be nice to Andrea. She said she would try to be nice to me. And we both said we would try to help Ms. Hannah with her problem.

  But it won’t be easy!

  About the Author and the Illustrator

  DAN GUTMAN has written many weird books for kids. Dan lives in New Jersey (a very weird place) with his weird wife and two weird children. You can visit him on his weird website at www.dangutman.com

  JIM PAILLOT is a talented but weird illustrator who lives in Arizona. He also has a weird wife and two weird children. Isn’t that weird? You can visit him on his weird website at www.jimpaillot.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Credits

  Cover art © 2005 by Jim Paillot

  Cover © 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  Copyright

  MY WEIRD SCHOOL #4: MS. HANNAH IS BANANAS!. Text copyright © 2005 by Dan Gutman. Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Jim Paillot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061973444

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