My name is A.J. and I hate it when my school gets attacked by monsters.
I should explain.
It all started the other day when our new teacher, Mr. Cooper, came flying into the room. And I do mean flying ! Mr. Cooper thinks heâs a superhero. But heâs not a very good one, because he knocked overthe garbage can and fell on the floor. Stuff spilled all over the place.
We all ran over to help him up. Mr. Cooper had a black plastic bag in his hand and a letter A on his cape.
âIt is I,â he announced. âApple Man!â
âApple Man?â asked Ryan and Michael.
âWhoever heard of a superhero named Apple Man?â asked Alexia, who rides a skateboard all the time.
âToday weâre going to learn about apples,â said Mr. Cooper.
âWhy?â asked Neil, who we call the nude kid even though he wears clothes.
âBecause itâs part of the Common Core!â said Mr. Cooper. âGet it?â
Nobody got it. But Mr. Cooper didnât care. He took some apples out of the bag and passed them around.
âWhen I was a kid, we used to say âAn apple a day keeps the doctor away,ââ Mr. Cooper told us.
âYou threw apples at doctors?â I asked. Then everybody laughedeven though I didnât say anything funny.
âDid you know there are seven thousand kinds of apples grown all over the world?â Mr. Cooper asked us. âBut only one is native to North Americaâthe crabapple.â *
âI know something about apples,â said Andrea Young, this annoying girl with curly brown hair. âIf you put an apple in water, it wonât sink. Apples have a lot of air in them.â
âVery good, Andrea!â said Mr. Cooper.
Andrea fist-bumped her friend Emily, the big crybaby. Then she smiled the smile that she smiles to let everybody know thatshe knows something nobody else knows. She thinks she is so smart. Why canât a truck full of apples fall on her head?
Mr. Cooper told us it was time for math.
âIf there are six apples on a table and you take away four of them, how many do you have?â Mr. Cooper asked.
Andrea was waving her hand in the air like she needed to be rescued from a desert island.
âTwo apples!â she said. âBecause six minus four is two.â Then she made her smiley smile again.
âNo,â said Mr. Cooper. âIf there are six apples on a table and you take away four of them, you have four of them, of course.You just took four of them away!â
âB-but . . . but . . .â
We all laughed because Andrea said âbut,â which sounds like âbuttâ even though it only has one t .
Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea.
Mr. Cooper taught us lots of interesting stuff about apples. Did you know that gravity was discovered when an apple fell on some guyâs head? Me neither.
Thatâs when the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened. The morning announcements came over the loudspeaker.
Well, thatâs not the amazing part,because the morning announcements come over the loudspeaker every morning. The amazing part was what happened after that.
Iâm not going to tell you what it was.
Okay, okay, Iâll tell you.
But you have to read the next chapter. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you.
Our school secretary, Mrs. Patty, does the announcements every morning. We pledge the allegiance, and then she tells us the weather, whatâs for lunch, and who has birthdays that day. Itâs pretty boring.
At the end of todayâs announcements, Mrs. Patty said, âAll students and teachers,please report to the all-purpose room for a surprise assembly.â
We had to walk single file a million hundred miles to the all-purpose room. Mr. Cooper made us sit boy-girl-boy-girl so we wouldnât sit next to anybody we liked. I had to sit between Andrea and Emily.
Our principal, Mr. Klutz, climbed up on the stage. He has no hair at all. I mean