Purrmaids #6 Read online

  The Scaredy Cat

  The Catfish Club

  Seasick Sea Horse

  Search for the Mermicorn

  A Star Purr-formance

  Quest for Clean Water

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Andrew Farley

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2019 by Vivien Wu

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. PURRMAIDS® is a registered trademark of KIKIDOODLE LLC and is used under license from KIKIDOODLE LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: Bardhan-Quallen, Sudipta, author.

  Title: Quest for clean water / Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen ; illustrations by Vivien Wu.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Random House, [2019]

  Series: Purrmaids ; 6 | “A Stepping Stones Book.”

  Summary: Purrmaids Coral, Shelly, and Angel help clean up the ocean as a school project and rescue the brother of their mermicorn friend, Sirena, who is trapped by plastic soda rings.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018030317 | ISBN 978-0-525-64637-2 (trade pbk.) | ISBN 978-0-525-64638-9 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-0-525-64639-6 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Mermaids—Fiction. | Cats—Fiction. | Water—Pollution—Fiction. | Ocean—Fiction. | Environmental protection—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.B25007 Que 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780525646396

  This book has been officially leveled by using the F&P Text Level GradientTM Leveling System.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Other Titles

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  To Caroline,

  my paw-some editor

  Most days, Coral was early for sea school. But this morning, Coral was having one purr-oblem after another. First, she dropped her seaweed pancakes all over the ocean floor. She cleaned them up. But then she got a stain on her new top and had to change. Then she tried to put on her favorite bracelet. But she accidentally knocked a stack of snail mail and her bracelet behind a bookcase!

  “Mama!” Coral shouted. “I can’t reach my bracelet!” She frowned. “My arms are too short.”

  “I’m coming,” Mama replied. She floated over and reached a paw behind the bookcase. “I can’t quite get it,” she said. “Help me move this out of the way.”

  Coral glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’m going to be late to school,” she whined.

  Coral loved many things about sea school. She loved being in the same class as her two best friends. She loved having the most fin-teresting teacher ever, Ms. Harbor, who made every day paw-sitively amazing.

  “Do you want to go to sea school without it today?” Mama asked.

  “No!” Coral yelped. She couldn’t leave her bracelet behind! “You know Shelly, Angel, and I wear our bracelets every day.”

  Shelly and Angel were Coral’s best friends. They wore their matching friendship bracelets so that everyone in Kittentail Cove knew they were a team. Coral would rather be late than go without her bracelet—and she hated being late!

  Coral moved to the far side of the bookcase. She and Mama pushed until it was a few inches away from the wall. “Do you see it?”

  Coral gasped. “Yes, I do—and a lot more!” she exclaimed. She scooped up her bracelet and the snail mail. Then she picked up a sea-glass necklace, a book, a scallop shell from her last trip to Tortoiseshell Reef, and a half-eaten piece of Founder’s Day candy. “I had no idea how much was back here!”

  “Sometimes, if you look hard enough, you can find all sorts of unexpected things,” Mama said.

  Coral handed Mama the snail mail and said, “If I hurry, I can still get to sea school on time.” She put her bracelet on her paw and reached for the doorknob.

  Before Coral could open the door, Mama shouted, “Hold on a minute! There’s something here for you.” She held out an envelope.

  Coral’s eyes grew wide. She said, “Snail mail? For me?”

  Mama nodded.

  Coral had never gotten snail mail before. But there was no time to read a letter. “I’m running behind schedule,” she said. “I’ll take it with me.” She stuffed the envelope in her bag and waved goodbye.

  Coral hurried to Leondra’s Square to meet up with Shelly and Angel. When she saw them, she yelled, “I’m sorry I’m late! Let’s hurry!” She zipped by her friends without even stopping.

  Angel and Shelly looked at each other and shrugged. Usually, it was Coral who complained that the girls were swimming too fast. “You must be really worried about missing the bell!” Angel joked.

  “Can’t hear you!” Coral called. “You’re too far behind me!”

  It didn’t take long for the girls to get to sea school. Coral’s heart was pounding from swimming so fast. But, luckily, by the time the bell rang, Coral, Angel, and Shelly were at their desks in Room Eel-Twelve. All the other students in the class were there, too. The only one missing was the teacher!

  “Where’s Ms. Harbor?” Adrianna asked. “She’s never late.”

  “She isn’t under my desk,” Baker said.

  “She isn’t under mine, either,” Taylor said.

  Angel rolled her eyes. “Of course, she isn’t!” she said. She swam to the classroom door. “I’ll check the hallway,” she said, peeking left and right.

  Coral spied a note on Ms. Harbor’s desk. She floated over to read it. Then she said, “I think we can stop looking.” She motioned for everyone to come closer. “I don’t think we’ll find Ms. Harbor here. But I did find this.” She read the note out loud.

  “Why does Ms. Harbor want us to go to the schoolyard?” Shelly asked.

  “Maybe today’s lesson is…RECESS!” Angel exclaimed.

  “I’m really good at recess,” Baker said.

  “I don’t even need a lesson!” Taylor added.

  Coral giggled. “I don’t think we’re getting a lesson in recess,” she said.

  The purrmaids headed to the schoolyard. Ms. Harbor was there waiting to welcome them. “You found my note,” she purred.

  “Not right away,” Angel said.

  “We actually looked for you for a little while before Coral found your note,” Cascade said.

  “It’s always fun to find something unexpected,” Ms. Harbor said. “In fact, finding surprises is going to be our lesson today.” She smiled at the
class. “I’m sending you on a scavenger hunt!”

  “A scavenger hunt?” Shelly asked. “What’s that?”

  “I know!” Coral said. “On a scavenger hunt, you get a list of things to find. The hunt is over when you’ve found everything on the list.”

  “Exactly!” Ms. Harbor purred.

  “Are we searching the schoolyard?” Adrianna asked.

  Ms. Harbor shook her head. “No, you’ll do your scavenger hunt after school. We’re going to practice in the schoolyard. But first, we have to talk about what kinds of things you might find in the ocean.” She motioned for the purrmaids to follow her. “All the creatures on this planet share the oceans in some way,” she continued. “For example, sea birds, such as pelicans, use the ocean as a hunting ground for food. Humans use the ocean to travel across the world.”

  “And purrmaids use the ocean as a home,” Angel said.

  “Exactly!” Ms. Harbor exclaimed. “We all share a responsibility to keep the waters of the world clean and safe. But what is trash to one creature might be treasure to another.” She pointed to something tucked near the bottom of a rock bench. “We’ve all seen bottle caps on the ocean floor. Sometimes humans throw them into the ocean, even though they really shouldn’t.”

  “They’re just garbage, right?” asked Umiko.

  “They are trash to purrmaids,” Ms. Harbor continued. “But some hermit crabs can reuse these bottle caps as homes.”

  “Really?” Coral asked.

  Ms. Harbor nodded. “The bottle caps are lighter than seashells, so a crab who chooses one for a shell can move very quickly,” Ms. Harbor explained. “We wish humans wouldn’t let these litter the ocean. But it’s nice that crabs are able to use them.”

  “So should we leave bottle caps alone?” Cascade asked.

  “Make sure there’s no crab first,” Ms. Harbor replied. “If they’re empty, throw them away properly.”

  The class floated to the school’s small sea vegetable patch. Ms. Harbor pointed behind a sea lettuce and asked, “What do you all think of whale poop?”

  “Gross!” groaned the class.

  Ms. Harbor laughed. “I agree. But there are tiny ocean creatures who rely on whale poop for food. And humans actually use whale poop to make perfume.”

  “No way!” Baker exclaimed.

  “They want to smell like whale poop?” Taylor groaned.

  “Humans can be hard to understand,” Ms. Harbor joked. “But that’s a whole different lesson.”

  “We’re not going to be hunting for whale poop, are we?” Shelly asked. She hated getting her paws dirty.

  “Don’t worry, Shelly,” Ms. Harbor said. “Remember, since whale poop is reused as a source of food, it should remain wherever it is.”

  Shelly still looked a little seasick. “Let’s talk about something else,” she mumbled.

  “I think there’s something over here,” Angel shouted. She reached under the sea-saw and grabbed a glass bottle and a metal soda can. “This bottle isn’t garbage,” she said. “We can make sea glass from this. And I love sea-glass jewelry!”

  “The can isn’t garbage, either,” Adrianna said. “My uncle, the mayor, always says that purrmaids can recycle them and put them to good use.”

  “You’re right,” said Ms. Harbor.

  The students spread out, looking for things they hadn’t noticed before. Coral, Angel, and Shelly floated toward the waterslide. Shelly swam to the top and slipped down the slide. When she jumped off, she was holding something in her paws. “Look at these!” she shouted.

  Ms. Harbor came over. “Pieces of a plastic fishing net and a few six-pack rings,” she purred. “What should we do with them?”

  Coral frowned. “We can’t recycle any of that,” she said. “They’re definitely all trash.”

  Ms. Harbor nodded. “Most plastic things that end up in the ocean can’t be reused or recycled. But they’re not just litter. They can be dangerous. Many animals get tangled up in plastic garbage. Then they can’t swim properly or open their mouths to eat.”

  “We don’t want harmful things in our ocean,” Baker said.

  Taylor asked, “What can purrmaids do to help?”

  “The most important thing is to make sure plastic gets removed from the ocean. It should always end up in garbage cans,” Ms. Harbor said. “There’s one more thing we can do to make these less dangerous.” She extended one of her claws and used it to cut through the six-pack rings and fishing nets. “Now these can’t get stuck around anything or anyone.”

  “That’s easy to do,” Shelly said.

  “And it’s a great excuse to get my claws out!” Adrianna joked.

  “We have a few more minutes before we have to go back to Eel-Twelve,” Ms. Harbor said. “Does anyone see anything else fin-teresting?”

  Coral glanced around the schoolyard. She couldn’t see any more bottles, cans, plastic bits, or even whale poop. She really wanted to find something special, just like Shelly and Angel had. “Maybe there’s something near the sea-fan fence,” she told her friends.

  “I don’t know,” Angel said. “It looks purr-ty clean.”

  Coral shrugged. She checked the fence, from the tops of the sea fans to the sand on the ocean floor. She was about to give up when she spotted a flash of bright orange. She leaned in closer and gasped. “I found something!”

  Coral pointed to the spiky orange thing on the far side of the fence. “Look, everyone!” she shouted.

  Ms. Harbor floated next to Coral. Her eyes grew wide. “You found something fin-credible!” she said. “Can you get it for me?”

  Coral nodded and reached for the orange spikes. But just like that morning with her bracelet, she was too small. “I can’t reach it,” she mumbled.

  “I’ll get it,” Shelly purred. She picked up the orange thing and gave it to Ms. Harbor.

  Coral tried not to frown.

  “This is a basket starfish,” Ms. Harbor said. “Its arms branch out many times into twisty spikes, making it look like a basket.” She gently placed the starfish back on the ground. “They are very, very rare. I’ve never seen one in Kittentail Cove.” She grinned. “Coral made a real discovery!”

  “What a paw-some way to finish the practice scavenger hunt,” Angel whispered.

  “It was almost as nice as when we discovered Sirena,” Coral replied, smiling.

  “But the basket starfish isn’t something we have to keep secret,” Shelly said.

  Sirena was a mermicorn—a creature who was part mermaid and part unicorn. Coral, Shelly, and Angel had met her while they were exploring the nature reserve near the Kittentail Cove Science Center. Most purrmaids thought mermicorns were imaginary. But Coral and her friends knew they were real. Sirena was their first mermicorn friend!

  Remembering Sirena made Coral smile as she went back to Eel-Twelve. When the students were settled, Ms. Harbor said, “I hope you all had fun outside.”

  “We did!” everyone replied.

  Coral said, “I can’t believe we found so much stuff in the schoolyard.”

  “I never noticed any of it before,” Angel said.

  “You can find a lot of unexpected things if you look hard enough,” Ms. Harbor said. She floated to the board and held up her sea pen. “Outside, we found things that can be reused.” She wrote reused on the board.

  “Like bottle caps!” Baker shouted.

  “And whale poop!” Taylor exclaimed.

  Ms. Harbor nodded. “What else?” she asked.

  Adrianna raised her paw. “There were things that can be recycled.”

  “Like glass bottles,” Umiko said.

  “And metal cans,” Cascade said.

  Ms. Harbor added recycled to the board.

  Angel said, “There were also things that should be removed.”<
br />
  “Like all that plastic garbage,” Shelly said.

  Ms. Harbor wrote removed on the board. “Anything else?” she asked.

  The students looked at each other. No one said anything.

  “Think carefully,” Ms. Harbor purred.

  Coral had an idea. She raised her paw. “The basket starfish,” she said. “It could be discovered.”

  “Purr-fect!” Ms. Harbor said. She added discovered to the board. “When you look carefully, you can find things in the ocean that can be reused, recycled, removed, or discovered,” she said. “Tonight, I’d like you to get into groups and explore some part of Kittentail Cove. You could search your neighborhood, Meow Meadow, Leondra’s Square, or anywhere else you want.” She put a piece of paper on each student’s desk. “Here’s what you’re searching for.”

  Coral read the instruction sheet.

  “Are we supposed to collect all these things?” Angel asked.

  Coral scrunched her brow. “We can’t collect all of it,” she replied. She pointed to the instructions. “Someone might be using the reusable things. We shouldn’t take those away.”

  “If we discover something, we might have to leave it where it is,” Angel said. “Like the basket starfish.”

  Ms. Harbor smiled. “You don’t want to take a hermit crab’s bottle-cap home away,” she said. “You don’t want to take a whale-poop feast away from our tiny ocean neighbors. But you probably shouldn’t leave anything that could be recycled where you find it. It would be best to bring those things to our recycling centers.”

  “And we can’t leave the garbage out in the ocean,” Coral said. “Especially not the dangerous garbage. We have to make sure all of that gets cleaned up and thrown out!”

  Shelly sighed. “I guess I can go hunting for garbage—if it keeps our ocean safe.”