Ms. Coco Is Loco! by Dan Gutman

1
Chillin’ at the School Store
    My name is A.J. and I hate school.
    The only cool part of Ella Mentry School is the school store. It’s a little room near the office where they sell stuff. Mostly they have pencils and pens and junk like that. They never have anything useful, like skateboards or video games.Still, it’s cool to buy stuff when you’re at school.
    The school store is open in the morning before the bell rings. The only problem is, I spent all my allowance over the weekend on a new football because some kid stole mine. So I didn’t even have a dime to buy anything at the school store. Bummer in the summer!
    â€œGuess what I bought with my own money?” this girl with curly brown hair named Andrea Young whispered to her crybaby friend Emily. Knowing Andrea, it was probably an encyclopedia.
    â€œWhat did you buy?” asked Emily.
    â€œAn encyclopedia!” Andrea said, allexcited. “It’s an encyclopedia for kids!”
    Ugh. Andrea loves reading and books and school and anything else that’s boring. She keeps a dictionary on her desk so she can look up words and show everybody how much she knows. Andrea is like a human filing cabinet.
    â€œYou know what I’m going to do with my encyclopedia?” Andrea asked Emily.
    Knowing Andrea, she would probably read the whole thing in ABC order so she would know everything in the world.
    â€œI’m going to read it in ABC order,” Andrea bragged. “If I finish one letter every day, by the end of the month I’ll know everything ! Won’t that be cool?”
    Yeah, cool like an oven. I wish a set of encyclopedias would fall on Andrea’s head.
    The bell rang and we all rushed to class. Our teacher, Miss Daisy, told us to put away our stuff and get ready for circle time. That’s when we sit around in a circle, so it has the perfect name.
    Suddenly the voice of the school secretary, Mrs. Patty, came over the loudspeaker.
    â€œMiss Daisy, please send Andrea and A.J. to Ms. Coco’s room.”
    â€œOooooh!” my friend Ryan said. “A.J. and Andrea are going to Ms. Coco’s room again. They must be in love !”
    â€œWhen are you gonna get married?” asked my other friend Michael.
    If those guys weren’t my best friends, I would hate them.

2
National Poetry Month Is Dumb
    Me and Andrea walked down the hall to Ms. Coco’s room. She’s the gifted and talented teacher at Ella Mentry School. That doesn’t mean she’s gifted and talented. It means she teaches kids who are gifted and talented.
    Me and Andrea are the only ones inMiss Daisy’s class who are in the G and T program. Don’t ask me how I got in. The only talents I have are burping the alphabet and making farting noises with my armpits. But we all had to take a dumb test, and afterward Ms. Coco decided I was gifted and talented.
    I hate being gifted and talented. I don’t want to be a gifted and talented nerd like Andrea.
    â€œGuess what, Arlo?” Andrea asked, as we walked down the hall. She calls me by my real name because she knows I hate it.
    â€œYour butt,” I replied.
    (Any time anyone says “Guess what?” you should always say “Your butt.” That’sthe first rule of being a kid.)

    â€œI’m taking a speed-reading class after school, so I can read faster,” Andrea bragged.
    Andrea takes classes in everything . If they gave a class in blowing your nose, she would take that class so she could get better at it.
    â€œWow,” I said, “it must be wonderful being you .”
    That’s called sarcasm. It’s when you say exactly the opposite of what you really mean. Sarcasm is fun, especially when you’re talking to somebody you hate, like Andrea.
    â€œArlo, did you know that aardvarks eat termites?” Andrea said. “And did you know that ants rarely live more than sixty days?”
    She must have been working on theletter A in