Gooney Bird and All Her Charms by Lois Lowry

1

    â€œIt’s March!” Mrs. Pidgeon said as she wrote the day’s date on the chalkboard. “In like a lion, out like a lamb!”
    She turned around and asked her second grade class, “Anyone know what that means?”
    The children all looked puzzled. Then Nicholas’s hand shot up.
    â€œNicholas?” Mrs. Pidgeon said.
    â€œAh, it means that, well, lions come in from the desert, and then—”
    â€œLions don’t live in the desert!” Tyrone called out. “They live in the jungle!”
    â€œNo,” Barry said in his professor’s voice, “lions live on the Serengeti Plain.”
    â€œWhatever,” Chelsea said. “
Tigers
live in the jungle! Isn’t that right, Mrs. Pidgeon?”
    Mrs. Pidgeon sighed.
    â€œAnd what about those lambs?” Tyrone added. “Lions would just
eat
lambs. They’d have a big lamb stew for dinner!”
    â€œSo would tigers!” said Chelsea. “They’d pig out on lamb!”
    â€œNo, they’d
lamb
out! Munch munch munch.” Tyrone moved his mouth ferociously. “Then they’d just spit the bones on the ground.”
    Keiko gasped and covered her ears. “Oh,” she murmured, “please don’t talk about that!”
    â€œWe won’t, Keiko,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. She went to Keiko’s desk and gently took her hands away from her ears.
    â€œActually, class, I was quoting a saying that has to do with the weather.” She went back to the board and pointed to the date. “It’s March first today, and it’s very cold outside. It’s often cold at the beginning of March. Sometimes even snowy or icy. So the saying means that the beginning of March can be very
fierce
, like a . . . what?”
    â€œTiger?” said Chelsea.
    â€œRhino?” suggested Nicholas.
    Felicia Ann timidly raised her hand. Mrs. Pidgeon nodded toward her. “Lion,” she said in her soft voice. “It means that the beginning of March is very fierce, like a lion. But the end of March is like a lamb.
Gentle
.”
    â€œGood! Thank you, Felicia Ann,” the teacher said.
    Malcolm began to sing loudly. “
Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb
. . . .”
    Mrs. Pidgeon put her hand firmly on his shoulder. “Enough for now, Malcolm. We’ll do some singing later today.”
    Malcolm stopped singing and slouched in his seat with a scowl.
    â€œGrumpy face, grumpy face,” Nicholas teased in a singsong voice.
    â€œEVERYONE!” Gooney Bird said loudly. “I have an announcement.” The students all fell silent. They looked at her. Every day there was something unusual about Gooney Bird. Sometimes it was quite startling, like the day she had worn a feathered hat and elbow-length black gloves to class; sometimes it was something very small, like the rhinestone earrings that she had described as “tiny, but tasteful.”
    Today Gooney Bird’s clothes were fairly ordinary, at least for Gooney Bird. She was wearing black leggings under plaid Bermuda shorts, and a sweatshirt that said HUMPTY DUMPTY WAS PUSHED across her chest. On one wrist she wore a silver bracelet jingling with charms. The children all loved Gooney Bird’s charm bracelet, which she had bought at a yard sale. (“Fifty cents!” she had told them. “And it’s real silver!”) From the bracelet dangled a tiny pair of sneakers, a little rocking chair, a basketball, a pair of spectacles, a miniature Volkswagen, a lobster, a wineglass, a pipe, a book, a slice of silver pizza, and—surprisingly—a skull.
    Sometimes the second-graders had tried to make up stories about the charm bracelet. They had created a story about a marathon runner who finished his race, wearing sneakers, and then drove in his VW to a pizza parlor. They had created a different story about a lady who sat rocking while she read a book and a lobster crawled