Ms. Hannah Is Bananas! by Dan Gutman Read Free Book Online Page A

teach.
    I’ve never been in there. No kid has ever been in there in the history of the world, because kids aren’t allowed inside. The teachers’ lounge is like a secret clubhouse for teachers only.
    My friend Billy from around the corner who was in second grade last year told me that they have big parties in the teachers’ lounge all day long. He said the teachers dance around and play Pin the Tail on the Donkey and eat cake and take target practice with BB guns. Then they try and think up new punishments to give us kids when we misbehave.

    That sounds cool. Maybe when I grow up, I’ll be a teacher so I can hang out in the teachers’ lounge all day and have fun.
    After we sat at our tables, Ms. Hannahtook off her pot-holder mitts and picked up a piece of black paper.
    â€œCan anyone tell me what this is?” she asked.
    Any dumbhead knows that. I raised my hand, and she called on me. “It’s a piece of black paper,” I said. “Duh!”
    â€œIt could be a piece of black paper, A.J.,” Ms. Hannah said. “But maybe it’s a black cat in a coal mine. Maybe it’s a crow flying in the middle of the night.”
    It was a trick question! I hate trick questions! My ears felt like they were on fire. I didn’t look at anybody, but I knew everybody was looking at me and laughing to themselves.
    It wasn’t fair! That stupid thing was aplain old piece of black paper, and everybody knew it.
    â€œIt looks like a piece of black paper to me,” my friend Ryan said. Whew! I knew I could count on Ryan. I turned around and gave him the thumbs-up sign.
    â€œI want you to open your imaginations, second graders,” Ms. Hannah said. “Art is everything and everywhere! It’s all around us! We are all artists. A dentist is an artist. Your mouth is your dentist’s canvas. A man fixing a roof is an artist. You can be an artist too.”
    Not me, I thought to myself. Art is stupid.
    Ms. Hannah put a big sheet of newspaper in front of each of us to cover thetable. She took a bunch of old T-shirts out of the closet and gave one to everybody to wear so we wouldn’t get paint all over ourselves. Then she put paint in the middle of all the tables and gave each of us a piece of white paper.
    â€œToday we are going to finger paint,” she said.
    â€œI’m not painting my fingers,” I said. Some of the kids laughed, even though I didn’t say anything funny.
    â€œYou silly dumbhead,” Andrea said. “Finger painting is when you use your fingers to paint pictures.”
    I knew that. Andrea thinks she knows everything.
    â€œWhat should we paint?” Emily askedMs. Hannah.
    â€œAnything you like! Express your creativity. Paint what you love.”
    â€œI love butterflies,” Andrea said. “I’m going to finger paint a picture of a happy family of butterflies.”
    â€œI’m going to finger paint a picture of a tree in a forest where your butterflies can live,” said Emily.
    â€œI’m going to finger paint a picture of a tree falling in a forest and crushing a family of happy butterflies until they are dead,” I said.
    â€œThat’s mean!” Emily said. She looked like she was going to cry, like she does at every stupid little thing.
    â€œHey, I’m just expressing myself,” I said.
    I turned around and saw that Ryan was finger painting an airplane. Michael was finger painting a house. Everybody was hard at work finger painting.
    The finger paint looked yucky to me. I didn’t really want to get it all over my hands. It was disgusting. I just sat there watching everybody finger paint. My piece of paper was the only one that was perfectly white.
    â€œWhy aren’t you finger painting, A.J.?” Emily whispered to me.
    â€œMind your own business, dumbhead.”
    â€œMs. Hannah!” Andrea called out. “A.J. isn’t finger painting.”
    Andrea is a big tattletale.