Frankie Sparks and the Class Pet Read online

  For my Dyer Dragons friends

  CHAPTER 1

  The Big Announcement

  FRANKIE SPARKS HAD A STORY to share. It was the best story ever. It gurgled in her stomach as she rode the bus to school. It fizzed in her fingers and toes when she and Suki Moskovitz and Maya played Don’t Touch the Hot Lava on the playground before school. It threatened to pop out of her mouth like a burp while they put their things away in their cubbies and did their morning work. But she managed to hold on to it all the way until morning meeting. By then she could barely contain herself.

  Frankie was in third grade at Grace Hopper Elementary, which was the luckiest place to go to school. Plus she had the best teacher, Ms. Cupid. And her best friend in the whole world, Maya, was in her class, and Ms. Cupid even let them be partners 50 percent of the time.

  Every Monday at morning meeting Ms. Cupid asked her class to share what they had done over the weekend. So, as soon as Frankie and her twenty classmates crowded down on the rug, Frankie raised her hand as high as she could. She stretched up on her knees and wiggled her fingers. But she didn’t say anything. Not one word. Her teacher, Ms. Cupid, did not like it when kids blurted.

  Ms. Cupid called on Lila Jones, who played with her shoelaces while she launched into a long story about her soccer game and how it had rained and how they had sat in their cars until the rain ended. Then they got to play the game, and Lila claimed they had won 3–2, but then Suki, who was on the team too, said, no, they had tied 3–3. How could you not even know if you had won or tied the game? Frankie wondered.

  “What matters is that you both played very hard, I’m sure,” Ms. Cupid said. “And were good sports about it.”

  Frankie thought that of course it mattered that they had played hard and were good sports, but it also mattered who had won or lost. It was a game, after all. “You really can’t remember if you won or tied?” she asked.

  “Frankie,” Ms. Cupid warned. “We’re moving on.”

  So Frankie shot her hand up into the air again. Ms. Cupid called on Luke Winslow, who talked about his soccer game. At least he knew who’d won—the other team—but he still went on and on and on.

  When Luke was done, Frankie shot her hand into the air again, and finally Ms. Cupid called on her.

  “We went to see my aunt at the university where she works. She’s a rodentologist. And—”

  “Excuse me, Frankie. I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think some of our friends might not know what a rodentologist is.”

  “It’s someone who studies rodents. We got to see mice and hamsters and white rats and . . .” Frankie took a deep breath. This was the best part of her story. “A capybara.” She pronounced the word slowly, just the way her aunt had taught her: cap-ah-bear-ah.

  “It’s like a guinea pig, but it’s four feet long!” Frankie rocked forward. “I got to lie down next to it. It was longer than me!”

  “Cool!” Luke exclaimed.

  Lila wrinkled her nose, but Suki said, “Wow!” Suki almost never said “Wow!” It was usually reserved for things like back handsprings and T-shirts with glitter on them.

  And of course Maya, Frankie’s best friend in the whole wide world, gave Frankie a big grin.

  “That is so cool, Frankie,” Ms. Cupid agreed. And then she flipped over the page with the morning message on it and wrote down the word “rodentologist” on the blank piece of chart paper below. She tapped her pointer against the word. “What a great vocabulary word.” Underneath it she wrote, Biologist. She explained, “A biologist is someone who studies living things. A rodentologist is a type of biologist. They study rodents like mice and rats. Can anyone think of any other types of biologists?”

  Frankie put her hand up. She knew all kinds of biologists. Ms. Cupid called on Luke, who said, “A bugologist?”

  “Great!” Ms. Cupid said. Frankie was pretty sure that “great” was Ms. Cupid’s favorite word. She used it all the time. “A biologist who studies insects is called an entomologist.” She wrote that word down on the chart paper in her neat, straight print. “Anyone else?”

  “Maybe a herpetologist?” Ravi asked. He didn’t even stumble over the big word.

  “Yes!” Ms. Cupid cheered. “And what’s a herpetologist?”

  “Someone who studies lizards and amphibians.”

  Suki asked, “How about someone who studies fish?”

  “Oh! Terrific, Suki! This is actually one of my all-time top-ten favorite words. Ichthyologist. Can everyone say that?”

  The class stumbled over the word as they tried to say it back to her. “We’ll work on it. We have plenty of time.” She put down her pointer and looked right at Frankie. “I’m so glad you shared this today, because it’s just perfect for something we are going to do later. I was going to tell you after snack, but I think I’ll spill my secret now.” She smiled, and the silver in her braces sparkled. Frankie hadn’t even known that grown-ups could have braces, but Ms. Cupid did, and Frankie thought they were as beautiful on her teeth as any jewelry. “We are all going to be biologists. We are going to study animals. And after we study animals, we are going to have a very important decision to make.” She stood up and walked over to a big rectangle covered by bright fabric with paw prints all over it. She pulled the fabric off and revealed a large glass aquarium, just like the ones the lizards had lived in at Aunt Gina’s lab. “Friends,” she announced, “we are going to research different kinds of animals, because we are going to get a class pet.”

  CHAPTER 2

  All about Rodents

  THE CLASS ERUPTED. MAYA GRABBED on to Frankie’s arm and cried, “No way!”

  Lila said, “We have to get a girl pet so that we have equal boys and girls.”

  “A dog? Can we get a dog?”

  “A dog can’t live in an aquarium. It has to be a fish.”

  “Or a hermit crab.”

  Frankie was an island of calm in all this madness. She sat, as still as a toadstool, with a big smile on her face. She knew exactly what should go in that case. A rodent. They were going to get a pet rodent.

  Ms. Cupid held up her hand so that her thumb pressed her middle two fingers against her palm and her pointer and pinky stood up like ears. “Quiet coyote is asking for calm.”

  The class settled their voices.

  “It is very exciting news,” Ms. Cupid agreed. “But we have a lot to do before it can happen. We need to research different kinds of pets and prepare arguments. We’ll have to convince Principal Flower that we can take care of a pet. We have to figure out how much things like food and supplies will cost.”

  Frankie nodded as Ms. Cupid spoke, but she was busy thinking of all the different rodents she had seen with Aunt Gina. Since they couldn’t get anything as big as a capybara, Frankie thought she might like a rat. Aunt Gina had told her they were very smart. Even a simple mouse would be great, but she bet Maya would like a guinea pig. It had big eyes and a cute face. Maya loved cats, and since of course they couldn’t get a pet cat for school, a guinea pig would be the next best thing since it was kind of roly-poly like a kitten.

  “For now, though,” Ms. Cupid continued, “we need to finish up morning meeting, and then we will have our reading block.”

  Frankie kept her eyes on Ms. Cupid, but she had a hard time listening, and she almost missed the direction to go back to her table. She grabbed Maya’s hand. “Let’s choose Read Together, okay?”

  Maya stopped at her own table and glanced at the thick novel that sat at her place. “I was thinking about choosing Read to Self, but sure, okay. What do you want to read?”

  Waiting at Frankie’s seat was a book her aunt had given her:
All about Rodents.

  “Oh,” Maya said. “That looks interesting.” Maya had dark hair that went halfway down her back. She twirled the ends around her fingers. “Want to sit in the beanbags?”

  Frankie agreed, and the two friends huddled together on one beanbag. “Isn’t this so exciting?” Frankie asked. “A class pet!”

  Maya brightened. “I know! I’ve never had a class pet before. My mom told me her nursery school had a guinea pig and it bit her!”

  “Girls, let’s get reading,” Ms. Cupid reminded them.

  So Frankie opened the book. “ ‘Rodents,’ ” she read out loud, “ ‘are mammals. They are chara—charac—’ ” The word stopped her.

  “ ‘Characterized,’ ” Maya finished for her. Then she said it again, more slowly. “ ‘Char-ac-ter-ized.’ ”

  “ ‘They are characterized by incis—’ ”

  “ ‘Incisors,’ ” Maya finished for her.

  “Right.” Frankie pointed to her own two front teeth. “These are your incisors. They are your cutting teeth.” Frankie knew what a lot of words meant, but sometimes she had trouble reading them when they were down on paper. She started reading again. “ ‘Rodents are mammals. They are characterized by incisors that never stop growing. Rodents are the largest group of mammals.’ ”

  “Wait? Their teeth just keep getting bigger and bigger?” Maya asked.

  “Yeah!” Frankie answered excitedly. “That’s why they always need something to chew on. Otherwise their teeth can get too big for their mouths!” She held up two fingers in front of her mouth like they were long rat’s teeth.

  Maya wrinkled her nose and turned the page of the book. “ ‘There are many different kinds of rodents,’ ” she read. Frankie loved to do Read Together with Maya, and not just because they were best friends. When Maya read, it was like the words danced out of her. It was almost like listening to a teacher read. “ ‘Some rodents, like mice, are very small. Others can be very large. The marmot, for example, can grow up to two feet long, not including its tail!’ ”

  “Huh,” Frankie said. “Do you think something that big would fit in that aquarium?”

  Maya glanced up at the aquarium that still sat on the table at the front of the room. “That can’t be bigger than three feet across. I think that wouldn’t be very nice for the marmot.”

  “You’re probably right. I guess we’ll have to get a smaller rodent.”

  “For a class pet, you mean?”

  “Yeah. It’s okay. There are lots and lots of smaller rodents. Mice, hamsters, gerbils—all sorts of things. I’m sure we can find one that will fit.”

  Maya twirled her hair again. It was what Frankie’s mom called a nervous habit, but Frankie had no clue what Maya might be nervous about. “What if we don’t get a rodent?” Maya asked.

  “Of course we’re going to get a rodent! All the rodents at my aunt’s university live in aquariums just like that. Well, I mean, the bigger ones live in bigger cages, but like I said, we can get a smaller rodent.”

  Maya chewed on her lip. “I guess I just hadn’t considered a rodent.”

  Frankie wrapped her arm around Maya’s shoulders. “It’s good that we’re such great friends, then. I thought of it for both of us!”

  “Right,” Maya said, and gave Frankie a small smile.

  “Go on,” Frankie urged. “Read me more about the marmot. I want to hear about it even though we can’t get one.”

  So Maya kept reading about how marmots build burrows under boulder fields and rocky cliffs. Then they read about how some rodents had pouches in their cheeks to carry food back to their homes. They learned that rodents had been around for almost fifty-six million years. Together they read most of the book before the reading block was over. When they were finished, Frankie was more certain than ever that a rodent was the perfect pet for Ms. Cupid’s third-grade classroom.

  CHAPTER 3

  Parameters of the Problem

  THE CLASS PET WAS ALL anyone could talk about during snack, and during lunch and recess. Normally while Frankie waited for her turn in four-square, she tapped her feet impatiently. But on the day of the class-pet announcement, she made lists of rodents in her mind. By the time they came back inside, red-faced and sweaty, Frankie had settled it. Her first choice would be a rat. They were very smart animals, so you could teach them tricks. Sometimes they would even come when you called their names.

  She put her coat back into her cubby. Ravi had the cubby next to hers. “What kind of animal do you want?” he asked.

  “Rat,” she answered.

  He nodded. “Good choice. Personally, I’m thinking of a mouse. I’m going to teach it to ride a toy motorcycle like in that book Ms. Adams read to us last year. The Mouse and the Motorcycle.”

  “That was fiction, Ravi,” she told him. “You can’t teach a mouse to ride a motorcycle.” But all the while she wondered if maybe she could teach a rat to ride something, like maybe a little toy car that he powered with his feet.

  Ravi just shrugged and went to the carpet, where the rest of the class had already settled. Frankie had to take a seat on the corner of the carpet, far away from Maya.

  Ms. Cupid was sitting in her rocking chair next to the easel with a big piece of chart paper. “We are going to brainstorm about class pets,” Ms. Cupid explained. “We are going to try to come up with a list of possible animals.”

  Frankie shot her hand up into the air. Ms. Cupid held up one finger, which Frankie knew meant that she had to wait.

  “Before we can brainstorm, we need to think about what kind of animal we might be allowed to get,” Ms. Cupid went on. “We need to come up with some guidelines to help us narrow our focus. Sometimes we call these ‘parameters.’ ”

  Frankie knew what Ms. Cupid was talking about. Her mom worked for a technology company that made robots and computers to solve problems. She always said that the first step was to define “the parameters of the problem.”

  Ms. Cupid wrote the word “parameters” at the top of the sheet of chart paper. “First, the pet we get needs to be able to fit in this aquarium.”

  That made sense, Frankie thought as she watched Ms. Cupid write the first parameter on the chart paper.

  “Number two, the price of the animal itself must be less than fifty dollars.” Ms. Cupid wrote as she spoke, which Frankie thought was a very impressive thing to be able to do.

  Frankie knew that the cost of a rat wouldn’t be a problem. Rats and other small rodents weren’t very expensive at all. The class would need to get other things for the cage, though. She raised her hand. “Just the animal, or anything else we need?” she asked when Ms. Cupid called on her.

  “Good question. We have fifty dollars to spend total. Food, of course, will be an ongoing expense, but anything we need to get the pet set up has to be included in that fifty dollars.”

  Ravi raised his hand. “What’s going to happen to the animal when we’re on vacation?”

  Ms. Cupid tapped her nose. “Good question. Thoughts, everyone?”

  “We bring our dog to the kennel,” Suki told the class. “Maybe we can bring our class pet to a kennel over vacation.”

  “We’d need money for that,” Luke argued. “How about we take turns bringing it home?”

  Frankie about fell over at that. A rat? At her house? That would be amazing! “We can definitely take it at my house!” she exclaimed.

  Ms. Cupid nodded. “Good thinking. I am going to say that I can take the class pet home over vacations, or maybe it will get to visit some of your homes. In that case, the pet needs to be easily portable. We also can’t be bringing it back and forth each week. So our pet will need to be one that can be left alone for the weekend.”

  “We leave my cat home alone some weekends,” Luke said.

  “We can’t put a cat in an aquarium,” Ravi replied.

  “True.” Ms. Cupid agreed. “But I think Luke is getting at a good point. He can leave his cat at home because
the cat can take care of itself. It can go get itself some food, and it has a place to go to the bathroom, and it has plenty of space to move around in the house. A dog, on the other hand, is not good to leave at home, right?”

  “Right,” Suki agreed. “We need to feed our dog every day.”

  “And you don’t want it to poop in the house!” Luke exclaimed.

  Frankie was only half listening to this conversation. She was imagining all the tricks she would teach the rat.

  “So,” Ms. Cupid said, “I think we can add some details to our last parameter. It should be an animal that doesn’t need to be fed every day.”

  She added this to her list, which now read:

  PARAMETERS

  1. Fits in aquarium.

  2. Costs less than $50.

  3. Easily portable.

  4. Able to be alone for the weekend— does not need to be fed every day.

  Frankie looked over the list. Fits in the aquarium? Check. That aquarium would be a palace for a rat. Costs less than fifty dollars? Check. She was pretty sure that rats cost much less than fifty dollars. Easily portable? Check. It could travel in its aquarium—or in her pocket. Able to be alone for the weekend—does not need to be fed every day? She bit her lip. She wasn’t sure about this one. Her aunt had told her that there were college students who worked in the lab every day. Some even came in on weekends to make sure the animals were okay. But did the rodents need to eat every day? She was pretty sure they did.

  She felt her stomach sinking. So she pressed right on her belly. Frankie Sparks, you are a problem solver, she told herself. She needed to get a little more information, and of course she knew just who to ask. As soon as she got home, she would call Aunt Gina, and she’d get the facts. If a rat did need to be fed every day, well then, Frankie would figure out a solution for that.

  “So right now I want everyone to think of three different animals that could meet these parameters. You might not know yet if it costs less than fifty dollars or if it can go a whole weekend alone. We will do some research tomorrow. For now, write down ideas of animals that you think could work. Three animals, three sticky notes. Got it?”