Just Grace Goes Green Read online

  Just Grace Goes Green

  Charise Mericle Harper

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  Just Grace Goes Green

  Written and illustrated

  by

  Charise Mericle Harper

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  Boston New York

  * * *

  Copyright © 2009 by Charise Mericle Harper

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Sandpiper,

  an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  Originally published in hardcover in the United States

  by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, an imprint of

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2009.

  SANDPIPER and the SANDPIPER logo are trademarks

  of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

  write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The text of this book is set in Dante.

  The illustrations are pen and ink drawings digitally colored in Photoshop.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file.

  ISBN: 978-0-547-24821-9 pb

  Manufactured in TK

  TK 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  * * *

  For my editor, Margaret Raymo,

  who is patient, kind, and creatively cool!

  JUST GRACE GOES GREEN IS PRINTED ON 100% RECYCLED PAPER

  This means it...

  1 contains 100% post-consumer fiber

  2 is certified EcoLogo and processed chlorine-free

  3 is certified FSC recycled

  4 is manufactured using biogas energy

  Using recycled paper instead of regular paper in Just Grace Goes Greenhelps the environment in the following ways:

  1 Saves the equivalent of 17 mature trees

  2 Reduces solid wastes by 1,081 pounds

  3 Reduces the quantity of water used by 10,196 gallons

  4 Reduces air emissions by 2,098 pounds

  5 Reduces natural gas consumption by 2,478 cubic feet by using biogas

  THINGS YOU CAN CHANGE

  1 Your underpants. Hopefully every day and if you are a girl probably without your mother having to remind you about it one hundred and one times.

  GIRLS' UNDERPANTS BOYS' UNDERPANTS

  2 Your friends. Sometimes you might think that you have the perfect number of friends, but then you add a new friend to the list and suddenly you can't believe that it used to be different, because now it seems so just right perfect, and just maybe even better than before.

  3 Your mind. So that if you at first thought one thing, but then some time goes by and now you think another thing, then that's okay.

  THINGS YOU CANNOT CHANGE

  1 Your family. Even if sometimes they absolutely and completely drive you crazy, and you can't even believe you are really related to them.

  2 Your messy room. No matter how much you clean it up, the new stuff you bring into

  it always makes it messy again. Though some rooms are more messy than others. Compared to Mimi's room, my room is the castle of clean!

  3 Your name on a teacher's list, even if it is marked in pencil. I know this because I used to be called Grace, but now I'm called Just Grace, and it will probably be that way in my school life forever and ever. Plus, my name is now not even next to the other Graces'!

  MY NAME IN MISS LOIS'S BOOK

  MISS LOIS VS. ME

  Miss Lois is my teacher at school. If her wants and my wants were in a wrestling match, her wants would always win. That's how it goes with teachers and students. And that's why my wants are sitting in the corner feeling sad. It's no fun to always be the loser.

  MY WANTS

  MISS LOIS'S WANTS

  Even though my wants are the always-losers, I don't hate Miss Lois.

  THE NEW MISS LOIS

  Miss Lois has been a more fun teacher lately. She used to be boring and serious most of the time, but now she is only those things some of the time. It's a big improvement! I think it's because she saw how much all her students loved Mr. Frank. He was fun 100 percent of the time. Mr. Frank was our student teacher, but he couldn't stay with us forever because he had to go back to school to finish off getting his teacher license. It's like a driver's license, except when you get it you don't get to do something fun like drive a car—you just get to stand in front of a classroom and talk.

  Since Mr. Frank left, Miss Lois has been trying a lot of new things, and mostly that has been exciting for us. She likes to give out her new ideas on Monday mornings—that way she says we will be excited for the whole rest of the week about a fun, stimulating learning experience.

  Stimulating means that the parts of your brain you use to learn stuff are excited and exploding like mini fireworks. Owen 1 said that Sunni's head was probably going to explode one day, because she is the smartest kid in our class and she really likes learning. Then he started asking her lots of questions so she would use her brain and make it blow up right then and there.

  Sunni just turned around and called him a peon. Of course, Owen 1 didn't know what a peon was—none of us did. She is smart like that, and uses lots of words no one has ever heard of before. But for sure it was not a compliment, and since Owen 1 was being mean and is not one bit smart, I bet it meant something perfectly awful. I was definitely going to look it up in the dictionary. Mostly I don't like looking stuff up, but it's always good to know about new name-calling words, even if you're not supposed to be using them. Just in case.

  WORD FOR LATER

  WHAT MISS LOIS SAID

  "Owen 1, if I have to tell you to stop talking one more time, I'm sending you down to the principal's office! Do you understand?" Owen 1 nodded his head yes, and Sunni smiled, and her perfectly round head did not explode.

  FIREWORKS INSIDE SUNNI'S HEAD

  FIREWORKS INSIDE OWEN 1'S HEAD

  WHAT MISS LOIS SAID NEXT

  "Class, it's time for us to go green. Does anyone know what that means?" Everyone had lots of different answers.

  WHAT GOING GREEN DOES NOT MEAN

  1 Studying frogs.

  2 Dressing up as Irish leprechauns.

  3 Getting free money.

  4 Eating lots of spinach or salad.

  WHAT GOING GREEN DOES MEAN

  Learning about new ways to save energy, recycle, and save the planet and its inhabitants, which means all the plants and animals and us. Miss Lois said our planet needed our help and we were all going to be superheroes of conservation and save the earth! Then she did something that was totally like Mr. Frank and not at all like Miss Lois. She asked us to each design our own superhero costume.

  When a project is fun, people sometimes want to do even more work than they are supposed to. This doesn't happen very often, so Miss Lois smiled when she said it was okay to design two different costumes if we wanted.

  MY SUPERHEROES OF CONSERVATION

  It was hard to get everybody to stop doing the fun part of saving the earth and concentrate on the learning part of saving the earth. Jane Dublin was especially unhappy when she found out that Miss Lois was not going to take our designs home and make us all real costumes to wear. Her costume was a pretty cool butterfly kind of thing. She would have sure looked great in it because she's got long, skinny legs kind of like a bug.

  Other people, like Owen 1, didn't really do a very good job of thinking about their design as a real costume. It would have been really hard for him to even fit in his.

  OWEN 1'S COSTUME

  Miss Lois
tried to make everybody feel better by saying that all our designs would make great Halloween costumes. She just doesn't know that most boys would never wear superhero costumes when they could wear gross masks and creepy clothes dripping with fake blood instead.

  SUPERHERO

  SCARY GUY

  THREE WAYS TO SAVE THE EARTH

  1. RECYCLE

  This means you put things in special bins so that they can be used again to make new stuff, instead of just throwing them in the garbage.

  THINGS YOU CAN RECYCLE

  Paper Products

  Plastic

  Glass

  Foil

  Cans

  2. CONSERVE

  This means if you are not going to be in a room, then you should turn out the light so you don't use up energy that you don't really need.

  There are lots of way to conserve energy that were too hard for us to do. Things like making sure you have good windows in your house and lots of insulation in the walls. Insulation is padding stuff that is stuck in the walls of houses. Miss Lois said it was like the fluffy stuff inside winter jackets only it was for the house. She said it worked the same, and that is how people kept their houses warm and cozy in the wintertime.

  Then she told us she did not want anyone to go home and knock holes in their walls to try to get a look and see if it was in there. As soon as she said this, Owen 1 said, "Aww, man!" So you could tell that he was totally thinking of doing this exact thing.

  INSULATION IN A HOUSE WALL

  Miss Lois said that conservation was something we could all practice at home right away. Marta said that she was going to try to get her little sister to stop playing with the toilet and flushing it all the time. Miss Lois said that was an excellent idea since every time you flush the toilet you use up around 3.5 gallons of water.

  Sammy said he could just wear the same clothes every day—that way his mom wouldn't have to do any laundry and that would save water too. Miss Lois said that was an interesting idea but not necessary because being clean was important too. I think she was probably being like me and imagining what Sammy's shirt would look like without being cleaned for an entire week.

  SAMMY'S SHIRT

  Miss Lois said conservation is important because it helps save the animals of the world and their natural habitats. Which means the places where they live in the wild ... not so much the zoo, because zoo animals pretty much don't have to worry about their homes being taken away to build a road or a grocery store.

  ZOO ANIMAL TALKING

  3. REUSE

  This means that instead of throwing something away you find someone who wants it and can use it, and then you sell it or give it to them. Miss Lois said lots of people donate clothes, computers, books, and even cars to people who need them.

  WHAT I WAS THINKING NEXT

  Sometimes if someone is giving me too much information, even if it is interesting and really important information like how to save the world, all I can think about is... When is the talking going to stop so we can go do something else?

  Miss Lois didn't hear my secret thoughts because she just kept talking, and talking, and talking, right up until the bell rang for our break. "I'm passionate about being green," said Miss Lois, and then she finally let us go.

  WHAT IS PASSIONATE

  Passionate means that Miss Lois probably wishes she could spend her entire life working on saving the planet. And maybe I was right about that, because right after our break she said we were going to skip math and talk some more about being green.

  LESS TALK, PLEASE

  Miss Lois said it was time to stop talking and time to start doing. She said nobody could save the earth all alone. We all had to work together. She said it was time to team up. Miss Lois was acting like Mr. Frank again, because she even let us pick our own partners. Of course Mimi and I picked each other. I didn't get to work with her on the last school project because I was away in Chicago. After everyone picked a partner, Miss Lois gave us our green jobs.

  JOB NUMBER ONE

  Keep a chart about the way we are conserving energy and being green at home. Write down at least one conservation thing that we are doing every day. Keep the chart for two weeks.

  JOB NUMBER TWO

  Come up with a green project that we are passionate about and then put that plan into action. Miss Lois said it was important to not think too big. She said, "The best green plans are right in your very own backyard."

  This was a little confusing, because Sandra Orr thought Miss Lois said that the best green plants were right in our very own backyard. So she put her hand up and said, "You're right! And I probably have the biggest green plant ever, because I am growing my very own pumpkin for Halloween, and those kind of plants take up the entire backyard. My dad is not happy about it, so Mom says this is the only year we are going to get to do it. Maybe the class can come over and see it, because it's really awesome!"

  Max and Sammy both said they totally wanted to see it, and pretty soon everyone was excited about pumpkins and Halloween.

  Miss Lois seemed a little confused and a little annoyed both at the same time. She wanted us all to be excited about saving water, saving paper, and saving metal cans, and not be talking about giant pumpkins instead.

  THE NEW AND IMPROVED MISS LOIS

  The old Miss Lois would have definitely been mad at us for not paying attention to her ideas, but the new Miss Lois said, "Okay, class, it's time for everyone to pick an animal mascot."

  PUMPKIN VERSUS ANIMAL

  WHO IS THE WINNER?

  ANIMAL MASCOTS

  Miss Lois said each group had to pick an animal from the endangered animals list as its mascot. Endangered animals are creatures that will go extinct if people do not stop destroying the natural places where they live. Stuff like cutting down trees or building houses and factories near their homes means that the animals have nowhere to go and no proper food to eat so they die. It's very sad.

  Miss Lois said that it was important to know about all these endangered animals. And to know them better we each had to write a paragraph about our mascot animal and present it to the class.

  Saving the planet was sounding a lot like regular schoolwork. I bet real superheroes don't have to write reports and do all sorts of projects. No wonder the earth was in trouble: nothing was probably ever getting done.

  Sandra Orr put her hand up and said that protecting animals was really important, and that it was really sad that humans had ruined the earth because now there were no more unicorns left and it was too late to save them. Miss Lois said, "Yes, Sandra, saving animals is very important." She knew you couldn't say one thing about unicorns not being real animals or else Sandra would burst into tears and have to go home. That had happened before.

  THE LIST

  Even though the list of animals on the endangered list was super long, Mimi and I had no trouble picking out our favorite three animals. It was a little harder trying to decide which of the three would be best.

  THE THREE TOP ANIMALS ON OUR LIST

  Finally we decided to pick the red panda because it was just so sad that an animal that cute could maybe go extinct, and then no one would ever see it again.

  WHAT BOYS DO

  All the boy groups picked weird and ugly animals for their mascots, stuff like rats, mice, and snakes. Max and Sammy said they picked the aye-aye because they liked saying the name a lot. The aye-aye was also a very weird-looking animal, so for sure they were probably excited about that too!

  AYE-AYE

  FINALLY

  This was a school day that seemed like it was going to last forever, even with Miss Lois trying to be fun and full of new ideas like Mr. Frank.

  I was so happy when it was all over and we could finally stop thinking about saving the earth and go home.

  MIMI'S NEWS

  The minute Mimi told me I said, "I can't believe you didn't tell me this before!" Not because it was a bad thing, but because it was a good thing, and how can you not tell you
r best friend a good thing the moment you find out about it? Mimi said that at first it sounded like a good thing but really when you thought about it, it was not a completely great thing after all, which is why she didn't tell me about it right away. She wanted it to sit in her brain so she could think about it a little bit first.

  Mimi's brain is like that. It probably has all sorts of interesting things in there waiting to come out one day. My brain is 100 percent the opposite. It likes to let everything right out through my mouth the minute it knows about it.

  THE THING

  Mimi's cousin Gwen is coming to stay with Mimi for ten days. At first I thought this was a good thing because I love Gwen and we all have so much fun when she visits. But when Mimi told me the three bad things about it, it didn't seem so great anymore, at least not for Gwen.

  1 Gwen was going to miss school, which is always a good thing, except she was going to have to hang out with Mimi's mom every day because Mimi was going to be at school. Plus, on top of that she was going to have to do all her homework anyway. How much fun was that going to be?

  2 She was going to miss her birthday with her friends.

  3 She was going to miss her mom and dad.

  WHY GWEN HAS TO STAY WITH MIMI

  Gwen's parents have to go to China for a big business meeting, and then after the meeting they are going on a mini vacation there, without Gwen. Mimi said, "At least they are not going somewhere really fun." But still they are going to be gone on her real birthday, which is completely not fair. Mimi said that Gwen is being brave and saying that she doesn't care about that part because when her parents get back she gets to have a super-big birthday party to make up for it. But I bet she is just acting about that, because if Mom and Dad missed my birthday I would for sure be sad.