Horse Feathers by Bonnie Bryant

Author:Bonnie Bryant [Bryant, Bonnie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82603-9
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2013-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

STEVIE WAS NOT having a good day at school. After putting One and Three back in the brooder, she’d rushed to get ready for school, running out the door while still trying to tie her shoelaces. Taking care of the quacking little goslings (all of whom had made her very aware that they preferred to be fed immediately upon rising) had made Stevie late leaving the house, which meant that she hadn’t had time to call Carole and tell her that four of the goslings had hatched. She’d also forgotten to grab breakfast, which caused her stomach to growl uncomfortably all through history class. To make matters worse, not only had she not done her homework for that day’s classes, but she’d also forgotten her algebra book at home on her desk, which meant that she’d had to ask her teacher if she could share with another student. Her teacher was not pleased.

The only class Stevie felt awake in was the last class of the day, science. The class was doing a unit on biology. Ms. Anderson had begun the hour with a discussion of the anatomy of an earthworm, a subject that was totally revolting to Stevie. She had far too many gruesome memories of what her brothers liked to do to earthworms. Alex’s favorite experiment was to see how many earthworms he could make out of one.

Stevie raised her hand.

“Yes, Stevie?” said Ms. Anderson.

In hopes of deterring her teacher from the current discussion, Stevie explained about the goose eggs that she’d won in the Job’s Comforters contest and how they’d started to hatch the night before.

Intrigued, Ms. Anderson agreed to momentarily put aside the discussion of the earthworm to allow Stevie to tell the class about her eggs. Stevie made her way to the front of the room and used the chalkboard to draw diagrams of the eggs, the incubator, and the brooder as she spoke. Unfortunately, once you’ve described one gosling hatching, you’ve basically described them all, despite Stevie’s attempts at creative storytelling. Even with the question-and-answer period, she was only able to stretch her egg discussion to ten minutes.

“Thank you, Stevie,” said Ms. Anderson as Stevie took her seat again. There was still half an hour of class left, and, much to the students’ dismay, their teacher quickly returned to the earthworm’s finer internal points.

Veronica, sitting two rows over from Stevie, had faked several yawns throughout Stevie’s lecture on goose eggs, wearing a look that clearly said, Could anything be more boring? Unfortunately, the answer was yes. Earthworms. And Veronica seemed to have even less of an urge to listen to that topic than she did to Stevie’s ramblings about wiggling eggs.

“Okay, everyone, please turn to page two-fifty-six for a picture of the earthworm’s anatomy,” said Ms. Anderson.

As the students dutifully turned to the proper page, Veronica scooped up her books, got to her feet, and walked to the front of the class. “I’d love to stay for the rest of what is likely to be a very interesting discussion,” she said sweetly to Ms.

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