Authors: Claudia Mills

Fractions = Trouble! (6 page)

BOOK: Fractions = Trouble!

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“But you're good at math!” Wilson said.

“I'm not good at spelling,” Josh said. “So last weekend my parents told me I had to have a spelling tutor, starting today.”

Josh gave Wilson a huge, sheepish grin. Wilson's grin was even bigger. No wonder Josh had looked so embarrassed when Kipper had spilled the secret about Wilson's tutor.

“Come on in, Wilson,” Mrs. Tucker said. “I want to hear all about the fractions test and the science fair. Josh told me that congratulations are in order.”

“See you later, alligator,” Josh said.

Wilson felt his grin fade. He was remembering how Kipper had tucked Snappy into his little felt sleeping bag on that cold, windy night.

If only the tent next door were really their tent.

Wilson's heart clenched like a fist inside his chest.

Maybe
â¦

It was worth asking.

“Can you wait one minute?” he asked Mrs. Tucker.

Without stopping to explain, he raced over to look more closely at the big, tall tent set up at the yard sale.

The tent had a little rip by the front door exactly like the little rip by the front door on Snappy's tent. It had a broken zipper pull just like the broken zipper pull on Snappy's tent.

Wilson peeked inside: there was no little alligator in a sleeping bag.

Wilson found the man in charge of the yard sale, who was sitting in a folding chair by a card table with a cash box.

“Excuse me? The big, tall tent over there? Where did you get it? It didn't blow here that night when it was so windy, did it?”

The man gave a loud belly laugh. “It sure did. There was no name on it, and no way I could find out whose tent it was. And I sure couldn't figure out why anybody would be camping on a night like that. Is it yours?”

Wilson nodded. But he didn't care about the tent. He cared about what had been inside the tent. He was almost afraid to ask his next question.

“There wasn'tâthere wasn't a little beanbag alligator in it, was there?”

“You bet. It's around here somewhere.” A worried look creased the man's face. “Unless somebody bought it already.”

Wilson's heart stopped beating.

“I put all the stuffed animals in that bin over there.” The man pointed. “Go and check.”

“Wilson!” It was his mom, calling over to him as she rode by on her tandem bike, with Kipper pedaling behind her. “It's past ten! Why aren't you at Mrs. Tucker's?”

Wilson didn't answer. Frantically, he dug through the bin, pushing aside a
Barbie with only one leg and a broken toy soldier.

He could hear Kipper's piercing voice: “Mom! That looks just like
our
tent!”

If someone had already bought Snappy, Wilson would die.

Kipper came running toward Wilson, as Wilson tossed aside a bear with torn overalls and a stained pink elephant.

Then Wilson saw a bit of faded green, alligator green, and then a whole little familiar alligator body.

The next thing Wilson knew, Kipper was hugging him, and his mother was hugging him, and Peck-Peck and Snappy were hugging him. He knew that if his dad and Pip had been there, they would have been hugging him, too.

Wilson had a funny thought, a thought he wanted to remember to tell his math tutor.

A family was like fractions, really.

Kipper and his mother and his father and Pip and Snappy and Peck-Peck were the parts.

And they made Wilson's happiness whole.

ALSO BY CLAUDIA MILLS

Dinah Forever
Losers, Inc.
Standing Up to Mr. O.
You're a Brave Man, Julius Zimmerman
Lizzie at Last
7Ã 9
=
Trouble!
Alex Ryan, Stop That!
Perfectly Chelsea
Makeovers by Marcia
Trading Places
Being Teddy Roosevelt
The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish
How Oliver Olson Changed the World
One Square Inch

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Everybody is bad at something. I have always been bad at math.

Part of the reason that I was bad at it was that I would spend my time in math class writing poems all over my math papers. That certainly didn't help. But I also never felt comfortable with numbers the way I did with words. Even worse than numbers were letters in equations like
x
and
y
. To this day I feel stressed whenever I see any equation that has
x
or
y
in it. I had an easier time
mastering my times tables than Wilson does, because I have a pretty good memory and could learn them by rote. But, oh, fractions were hard!

Unlike me, my younger sister was good at mathâvery good at math. (Actually, she is good at almost everything.) For a while, that bothered me. But then I realized that she could help me with my math homework, and all throughout high school she did. (She was also a math tutorâas good as Mrs. Tuckerâfor other students at school.)

Now I am the mother of two grownup sons. One of them is a math whiz; the other one, well, he takes after me and struggles with it. For him, as for me, fractions wereâand areâtrouble!

mackids.com

eISBN 9781429965101

First eBook Edition : August 2011

First edition, 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mills, Claudia.

Fractions = trouble! / Claudia Mills ; pictures by G. Brian Karas.â1st ed.

p. cm.

Sequel to: 7 Ã 9 = trouble!

Summary: While trying to decide on a science fair project, third-grader Wilson struggles with fractions and, much to his embarrassment, his parents sign him up to work with a math tutor.

[1. FractionsâFiction. 2. Science projectsâFiction. 3. SchoolsâFiction.] I. Karas, G. Brian, ill. II. Title. III. Title: Fractions equal trouble!

PZ7.M63963Fr 2011

[Fic]âdc22

2010008395

BOOK: Fractions = Trouble!

4.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

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