Class President (5 page)
Authors: Louis Sachar
His mother was standing by the stairs. Her hands were on her hips. “So nice of you to come home,” she said.
“Sorry,” said Marvin.
“Sorry?” asked his mother. “Is that it?”
Marvin didn’t know what else he could say. “I forgot,” he said. “You won’t believe what happened at school today!”
“What was the last thing I said to you before you left this morning?” his mother asked.
Marvin sighed. “You said to come straight home so we could go shopping for shoes. But—”
“I left work early so that I would be able to take you,” said his mother. “I had to rearrange my whole work schedule.”
Marvin’s father came down the stairs. “Don’t you ever think about others?” he asked.
It was two against one.
“Linzy, Jacob, and your mother sat around waiting for you,” his father said. “Don’t you think they had better things to do?”
“I’m sorry,” Marvin said again. “I forgot all about it. But you won’t—”
“We finally left without you,” said his mother. “Now I’m going to have to take you to the store tomorrow. Which means rearranging my work schedule
again.
”
“I can wear my old shoes,” Marvin offered.
“Maybe you should just go barefoot to your cousin’s bar mitzvah,” said his father. “Maybe that will help you learn.”
“Can I go barefoot, too?” asked Jacob. He smiled at Marvin.
Their parents didn’t think that was funny.
“Do you know what time it is?” his mother asked him.
“No.”
“It’s almost six o’clock,” said his father.
“Six o’clock?” asked Marvin. “Quick, turn on the TV!”
His parents stared at him. His mother raised her eyebrows. “There will be no television for you,” said his father. “Not for a week. Maybe then you won’t forget so much. Maybe television is destroying your brain.”
“It’s not regular television,” Marvin tried to explain. “The—”
“No TV!” shouted his mother.
“You care more about television than you do about your own family,” accused his father.
“I don’t,” said Marvin. “But you have to watch—”
“We don’t have to watch anything!” his mother interrupted. “Now, I don’t want to hear any more about it. If you keep it up, there will be no TV for a month. You may go to your room and get started on your homework.”
Marvin didn’t know what to do. His parents wouldn’t listen to him. They thought he was a selfish, rotten TV mush-brain. He slowly started up the stairs.
Linzy caught up to him. “You want to see my new shoes, Marvin? They’re really pretty. They have bows and buttons.”
Marvin tried to smile.
Down below, in the family room, Marvin’s
father turned on the news. Marvin heard Clark Rogers’s voice coming from the television.
“The president went looking for good citizens today. And he found them at Dogwood Elementary School.”
Marvin stopped.
“Hey, Marvin, that’s your school!” Jacob shouted from the bottom of the stairs.
“That’s Marvin!” exclaimed Marvin’s father.
“I want to see!” said Linzy. She ran down the stairs.
Marvin stepped down a couple of steps and leaned way over the banister. He saw himself on TV adding the big numbers. Then he saw the president talking to his class.
“America is not just a place on a map. America is made up of all of its citizens. If we want America to be a great country, it is up to every single one of us—me, you, Mr. McCabe, Mrs. North, Marvin—to be good citizens.”
“Did he mean you, Marvin?” asked Jacob.
“Shh!” said Marvin’s mother.
“The students in Mrs. North’s third-grade class had lots of ideas about what it means to be a good citizen,”
said Clark Rogers.
Marvin saw Casey Happleton on the television.
“Help people who need help.”
“There’s Nick,” said Jacob.
“Don’t fight.”
“And Stuart,” said Marvin’s mother.
“If you, uh, see a fire or something, you should put it out.”
“The students also had lots of interesting and unusual questions for the president,”
said Clark Rogers.
Marvin heard Kenny ask,
“Do you ever mess up? You know, make mistakes?”
He hoped his parents listened to the president’s answer.
“Of course. Everybody makes mistakes.
And when you’re president, you can really mess up big time. But if you’re smart, you learn from your mistakes. And you should try to be understanding and forgive other people when they make mistakes.”
Marvin nearly fell over the banister, but caught himself.
“The children in Mrs. North’s class were very impressed with their visitor, and I think
the president was very impressed with the children,”
said Clark Rogers.
“There’s Marvin!” screamed Linzy.
Marvin strained to look.
“Is there something we should be doing now if we want to be president someday?”
“I think you’re already doing it, Marvin. Work hard. Listen to your teacher. Be a good citizen. All those things we talked about earlier. If you do that, then any one of you—Casey, Travis, Nick, Patsy—might be president someday.
“Take a good look at this bright young man here. You may be looking at a future president.”
Marvin’s parents looked at Marvin, first on TV, then on the stairs.
Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
Don’t miss a single Marvin!
Marvin suddenly figures out why he has red hair and blue eyes, while the rest of his family has brown hair and brown eyes. He’s not really Marvin Redpost at all. He is Robert, the Lost Prince of Shampoon!
“Wonderfully logical and absurd, with wit and attention to detail rare in an easy reader.… Aside from being resoundingly funny, Sachar has a rare honesty about what children really encounter in the world.”
—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
“My name’s not Marvin.”
—Marvin Redpost
The rumor is going around that Marvin is the biggest nose-picker in the school. Now everyone is acting as if the rumor is true! Even Marvin’s best friends don’t want to be seen with him. But what can Marvin do about it?
“Vintage Sachar—ingenious, funny, gross—and with a believable resolution.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“Marvin’s the biggest nose-picker in the whole school.”
—Melanie, Marvin’s classmate
Marvin kisses his elbow by accident. Now he wishes he had pigtails and wants to play hopscotch! Everyone at school knows that if a boy kisses his elbow, he’ll turn into a girl. Could Marvin be turning into a girl?
“Sachar writes for beginning readers with a comic simplicity that is never banal.”
—
Booklist
“There’s nothing Marvin Redpost can’t do.”
—Stuart Albright, Marvin’s best friend
Marvin’s friends think he’s the luckiest boy in the world when Mrs. North asks him to dog-sit for a week. He gets $3 a day, plus a $4 bonus if nothing goes wrong. And he gets to be alone in Mrs. North’s house!
“Sachar’s finely tuned sense of how children think and feel makes his fourth book about Marvin and his comic misadventures entertaining.”
—The Horn Book Magazine
“Marvin’s going to use the bathroom in Mrs. North’s house!”
—Melanie, Marvin’s classmate
Marvin can’t sleep. Suddenly something zooms across the sky. It looks a lot like Nick’s birthday cake! Could it be? Or is it something else? The next day there’s a new boy in school. His name is Joe Normal, but everyone thinks he’s weird. What is
normal
, anyway?
“A smart, funny twist on the new-kid theme.”
—The Horn Book Magazine
, Starred
“His name should be Marvin Stupid.”
—Casey Happleton, Marvin’s friend?
Everyone at school thinks that Marvin Redpost is going to ride his new bike down Suicide Hill. But not only is Marvin terrified of the steep hill, he’s afraid of his new bike! How can Marvin survive this one?
“If Marvin says he’ll ride down Suicide Hill, then he’ll ride down Suicide Hill.”
—Stuart Albright, Marvin’s best friend
Marvin Redpost’s friend Casey Happleton lives in an old firehouse. But that’s not the only cool thing about her. She’s also got a super-secret
magic
crystal that she’s going to share with Marvin!
“Lively dialogue and Marvin’s endless imagination command steady attention.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“You’re weird, Marvin!”
—Casey Happleton, Marvin’s friend?
Louis Sachar writes great,
funny books for everyone!
