Horrible Harry Moves up to the Third Grade Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  Are We on Mars?

  Two Things in Third Grade That Didn’t Change

  A Deadly Event

  Things Get Rocky

  Murder in the Mine

  Sidney Disappears!

  Something horrible has happened to Horrible Harry’s pet spider!

  And then at 10:07 it happened.

  When everyone was busy.

  Harry was over by the windows trapping a fly for Charles’s meal.

  “Auuuuuuuugh!” Sidney screamed. “The spider just crawled out of the trapdoor. He’s gonna get me!”

  Harry put down his flyswatter and raced over.

  But not in time.

  Sidney took one of my copper rocks and smashed the spider.

  Blam!

  “You killed Charles!” Harry yelled.

  PUFFIN BOOKS ABOUT HORRIBLE HARRY AND SONG LEE

  Horrible Harry and the Ant Invasion

  Horrible Harry and the Christmas Surprise

  Horrible Harry and the Drop of Doom

  Horrible Harry and the Dungeon

  Horrible Harry and the Green Slime

  Horrible Harry and the Kickball Wedding

  Horrible Harry and the Purple People

  Horrible Harry in Room 2B

  Horrible Harry Moves Up to Third Grade

  Horrible Harry’s Secret

  Song Lee and the Hamster Hunt

  Song Lee and the Leech Man

  Song Lee in Room 2B

  Dedicated with love to my daughter Emily

  and my son-in-law Victor Hurtuk, who had

  their beautiful wedding in an old stone

  church in Connecticut, August 2, 1997

  Special thanks to my editor, Cathy Hennessy, for her help with this man

  uscript ; and to my husband, Rufus, for his sense of humor; and to my

  wonderful third-graders, who went with me to the Old New-Gate Prison

  and Copper Mine in East Granby, Connecticut.

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 1998

  Published by Puffin Books,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2000

  Text copyright © Suzy Kline, 1998 Illustrations copyright © Frank Remkiewicz, 1998

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Kline, Suzy.

  Horrible Harry moves up to third grade / by Suzy Kline ; pictures by Frank

  Remkiewicz. p. cm.

  Summary: Horrible Harry and friends start off third grade with a new room

  and a field trip to an old copper mine to study rocks.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07690-3

  [1. Schools—Fiction. 2. School field trips—Fiction.

  I. Remkiewicz, Frank, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.K6797Hp 1998 [Fic]—dc21 98-13098 CIP AC

  RL: 2.5

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Are We on Mars?

  I couldn’t wait for third grade in Room 2B.

  Same class.

  Same teacher.

  Same room.

  And most important ... Harry and I would be together for another school year. Safe and sound.

  Boy, was I wrong!

  On the first day of school, Harry and I went walking down the hall.

  “Ready for third grade, Doug?” he asked.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  We slapped each other five.

  When we got to Room 2B, we stopped dead in our tracks. A tall man with green eyes and a bald head greeted us. “Welcome to school, boys!”

  “You’re not Miss Mackle,” Harry said. “This is Miss Mackle’s room!”

  “No. I’m Mr. Moulder. I’m teaching second grade. This is my room now.”

  Harry stepped inside and looked around. “Are you hiding her somewhere?”

  Mr. Moulder scratched his shiny head. “Hiding who?”

  Harry and I exchanged looks. What was going on? Were we in the right school?

  We ran outside the building to double-check. There it was in cement just above the door:SOUTH SCHOOL

  FOUNDED IN 1901

  “This is crazy,” I said.

  “This is weird,” Harry said. “We’re supposed to have Miss Mackle for third grade. Where is she?”

  We walked back into the building.

  “Let’s go to the office,” I suggested.

  When we got there, we saw a huge bouquet of flowers. Harry read the little note speared on the plastic fork: CONGRATULATIONS, MRS. CARPENTER!

  We looked at the lady sitting at the secretary’s desk. She had her back to us. She was typing something on her computer.

  “That’s not Miss Foxworth,” Harry said. “Miss Foxworth doesn’t have blonde hair.”

  “Let’s go ask Mrs. Chan, our old kindergarten teacher,” I said.

  We dashed down the hall.

  “Can I help you boys?” asked a young woman who looked like Snow White. “I’m Miss Zaharek, the kindergarten teacher.”

  “AAAAHHHHHHH!” we screamed.

  We started pounding our hands on the wall poster, “ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN.”

  Finally, the principal showed up.

  When we spotted his curly hair and mustache, we cheered, “Mr. Cardini!”

  “Well, hello, Harry and Doug. You boys lost?”

  “Yeah!” Harry said with his fist in the air. “It feels like we’re on Mars!”

  Mr. Cardini laughed as he twirled his mustache. “I think you two are looking for your third-grade room. That’s upstairs. Didn’t you read the number on your old report card?”

  Harry and I shrugged.

  “Take a left at the top of the stairs. Room 3B is the second room on the right side of the hall.”

  Harry and I took off like two road-runners. We zoomed up the stairs in seconds, then took a left and counted two rooms down on the right side.

  “This room must be Mars,” Harry said. “Look at these boulders stacked outside the door.”

  “Just a minute,” I said. “These aren’t real rocks. They’re grocery bags from Park and Shop crunched up and sprayed brown.”

  Harry smelled the rocks and saw the faint lettering through the paint. “Yeah. They’re phony.”

  Slowly, we passed through the boulder archway When we stepped inside, we were greeted by a big sign on the bulletin board. It said, THIRD GRADE ROCKS. There were lots of rocks on the display table, but we didn’t go over and look at them. We just noticed the class.

  “Hi, Harry! Hi, Doug!” everyone. shouted. There were Song Lee, Mary, Sidney, Ida, Dexter ...

  ... and Miss Mackle!

  Harry ran over and gave her a big hug.

  I waved.

  I was just as glad to see her, though.

  “Welcome to third grade, boys. I can’t wait to hear about your summer.”


  “Forget summer. What’s going on here?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Harry replied. “Who’s that bald guy in Room 2B. And where are Miss Foxworth and Mrs. Chan?”

  Miss Mackle smiled. “Every summer brings some changes. As you know, we moved upstairs. And South School just hired two new teachers. Mr. Moulder for second grade, and Miss Zaharek in kindergarten. Mrs. Chan retired.”

  “What happened to Miss Foxworth? Did she fall off a cliff or something?”

  “No, Harry,” Miss Mackle said. “She got married over the summer and changed her name. Now she’s Mrs. Carpenter.”

  “She looks different,” I said.

  “She changed her hair,” Miss Mackle said. “She’s a blonde now.”

  “Ooooooh,” we replied.

  When the bell rang, Harry and I found our seats. They had our names on them. Mine was by the window. Harry’s was next to the pencil sharpener and wastepaper basket. He seemed to like that. He gave me the thumbs-up sign.

  I wasn’t so sure, so I just nodded.

  Was everything going to change in third grade?

  Two Things in Third Grade That Didn’t Change

  The first thing I did when I sat down was look out the window. Everything looked so different from the second floor. Last year, I could see the school Dumpster, lawns, and cars on the street. Now there were just clouds and the sky.

  “Look!” Harry blurted out from across ‘the room. “There goes Lifestar, the helicopter. I bet it’s taking a bloody person to the hospital.”

  Mary made a face. “I was hoping you might change over the summer, Harry But you haven‘t,” she groaned. “You’re still gross.”

  I smiled.

  At least that was one thing I could count on.

  Ida raised her hand. “Where’s the monitor chart, Miss Mackle?”

  “Up here, in cursive,” she said, pointing to the front bulletin board.

  It looked like Greek to me. I tried reading it:

  I couldn’t even read the job I had.

  The rest of the kids’ names were in the envelope at the bottom. I couldn’t read the words on that either:

  “Welcome to third grade, boys and girls,” Miss Mackle said. “I am so excited that we looped. Here we are for a second year together! I hope you all got my postcard asking you to bring a summer memento to class.”

  Everyone nodded.

  Even Harry.

  Harry did his homework? Now I knew I was on another planet!

  “Before we have our morning conversation about our summer, let’s have our class leaders start the pledge.”

  Harry and Sidney each carried a small flag to the front of the room. I knew why Miss Mackle put them together. They have a tough time getting along. Sidney does something stupid and then Harry gets revenge.

  I wondered if that would change, too?

  After the pledge and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” we all sat down at our desks. “Now,” Miss Mackle said, “let’s share our summer experiences. Song Lee, will you begin?”

  Song Lee opened the brown bag on her lap.

  Everyone leaned forward to see what was inside.

  “My aunt visited us from Korea. When we took a walk, I found this.”

  We watched Song Lee hold up a jar that had something golden inside. It looked like an egg wrapped in silk.

  “Aunt Sun Yee and I found this under a fence post. It is a spider egg sac. In the spring, it will hatch into many spiders just like Charlotte’s magnum opus.”

  Miss Mackle sighed. “Ohhhh ...”

  I could tell the teacher loved Song Lee’s memento. She put her hand over her heart.

  “Can I go next?” Sidney blurted out. “I’ve got a momento, too.”

  “Memento,” Mary corrected. “No, you can’t go next. I have a question for Song Lee. What did you put on top of your jar?”

  Song Lee giggled. “Aunt Sun Yee’s pantyhose. We cut up an old pair.”

  When everyone laughed, I thought about Song Lee. She spoke English so well now.

  “Can we keep the egg sac in the classroom?” Dexter asked.

  “Yes,” Song Lee replied. After we all watched her set the jar gently on the science table, we raised our hands again.

  “Go ahead, Sidney,” Miss Mackle said.

  “Finally,” Sidney groaned.

  Then he started unwrapping something in aluminum foil. “My stepdad and I did a lot of barbecuing this summer, so I brought this as a souvenir.”

  We watched Sidney hold up a burnt wiener.

  “It got left on the grill.” Sidney cackled.

  A lot of people laughed, but Harry and I didn’t. We thought it was dumb. Who would bring something like that to class?

  Sidney LaFleur.

  I went next.

  “I brought rocks,” I said. “I got them at the Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine in East Granby. They’re real copper. And this is an old Granby copper coin.”

  When I held the stuff up, everyone oooohed and aaahhed.

  “Gee, Doug,” Miss Mackle said, writing something down on her clipboard. “That would be a great place to visit, since we’re studying rocks in science! Maybe I could arrange a class field trip to that mine.”

  “Yeah!” everyone said.

  Oh boy, I thought secretly. That’s what I get for leaving one small part out of my story. I never went down into that mine. I was too chicken. Two days before my family went to Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine, Harry and I had watched the movie Tom Sawyer. It was great except for one awful part where Tom and Becky get lost in the mine, and Injun Joe falls down the hole in a cave. I made up my mind then, I would never go underground.

  Please, God, I prayed. Don’t let us go on a class field trip to that mine.

  “Okay,” Harry said. “My turn.” And he held up a picture of himself in that scary elevator ride, THE DROP OF DOOM, at Mountainside Park. “I wasn’t afraid at all,” he bragged. “It was a piece of cake.”

  That made Song Lee and me roll our eyes.

  We knew better.

  Sidney cracked up. “Yeah. Tell me more, Old Yeller! Tell the truth! Tell ‘em you had a HUGE case of the heebie-jeebies!”

  When Harry held up a fist, I knew what he was thinking. Revenge.

  That was the second thing that didn’t change in third grade.

  I just worried what Harry might do.

  A Deadly Event

  Things took a nosedive the next day when Harry brought something to school in a shoe box.

  The box had cellophane on top so you could look inside. All we could see, though, was dirt, some grass, a rock, a plastic lid, and a toilet-paper tube.

  “Oh no,” Ida groaned. “Does that box have a snake in it like the first day in second grade?”

  “Nope.” Harry grinned.

  “Something better,” he said. “My mom read me Charlotte’s Web this summer, and I got interested in spiders.”

  Miss Mackle beamed. “I remember when I read that book to you last year.”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “I will never forget our invasion of the cobwebs. Well, there’s a real spider and cobweb in this box, and I have to get him some fresh water.”

  Sidney cringed.

  We watched Harry open up the trapdoor on the side of the box, pull out a small lid, and take it over to the classroom sink to fill it with water. When he returned, he put it carefully back inside.

  “Now I’ll close the trapdoor so Charles can’t get out.”

  “Charles?” Sidney scoffed. “You gave your spider a name?”

  “Of course,” Harry snapped. “He’s my pet spider. I found him in my bathtub a week ago.”

  “I didn’t know spiders took baths,” Sidney said.

  “They don‘t,” Harry groaned. “He was just thirsty. A bathtub is a good place to find some water.”

  “What kind of spider is he?” Miss Mackle asked.

  “Just an ordinary one with eight legs and eight eyeballs,” Harry said. “He has everything he needs
in this spider house. I just have to feed him a fly now and then.”

  “I hate spiders,” Sidney said. “They’re bloodsuckers.”

  Mary put her hands on her hips. “Spiders have to eat, too! Charlotte explained all of that.”

  “I think I’ll make a spider house for my egg sac after school,” Song Lee said.

  “I’ll help you,” Mary replied.

  Harry and I started pulling books about spiders out of the library corner.

  Mary and Song Lee got their science notebooks and started drawing pictures of Charles.

  Dexter and Ida made a spider board game about Charlotte’s Web with pink chance cards.

  “What were the names of Charlotte’s three grandchildren?” Dexter said as he wrote the question down. “Name them and you advance three spaces.”

  And then at 10:07 it happened.

  When everyone was busy

  Harry was over by the windows trapping a fly for Charles’s meal.

  “Auuuuuuuugh!” Sidney screamed. “The spider just crawled out the trapdoor. He’s gonna get me!”

  Harry put down his flyswatter and raced over.

  But not in time.

  Sidney took one of my copper rocks and smashed the spider.

  Blam!

  “You killed Charles!” Harry yelled.

  Miss Mackle rushed over.

  Everyone made a circle around the science table.

  “He was trying to escape,” Sidney pleaded. “He was going to bite me. I did what I had to do.”

  No one said anything.

  Slowly Harry put up two fists.

  Uh-oh, I thought. Now he’s thinking Double Revenge.

  Miss Mackle called us over to the braided rug in the library corner. “Please sit down, boys and girls,” she said.

  We did.

  “Spiders are nature’s best friends. They eat harmful insects. They help plants grow. We don’t have to be afraid of them.”