The Christmas Genie

The CHRISTMAS GENIE

Also by Dan Gutman

THE HOMEWORK MACHINE
RETURN OF THE HOMEWORK MACHINE
NIGHTMARE AT THE BOOK FAIR
GETTING AIR

Dan Gutman

Illustrated by Dan Santat

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,
or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters,
places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination,
and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2009 by Dan Gutman
Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Dan Santat
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in whole or in part in any form.
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Book design by Tom Daly
The text for this book is set in Horley Old Style MT.
The illustrations for this book are rendered digitally.
Manufactured in the United States of America
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gutman, Dan.
The Christmas genie / Dan Gutman ; illustrated by Dan Santat.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When a meteorite crashes into a fifth-grade classroom at
Lincoln School in Oak Park, Illinois, the genie inside agrees to grant
the class a Christmas wish—if they can agree on one within an hour.
ISBN 978-1-4169-9001-7
ISBN 978-1-4391-5826-5 (eBook)
[1. Genies—Fiction. 2. Wishes—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction.
4. Christmas—Fiction. 5. Meteorites—Fiction.]
I. Santat, Dan, ill. II.
Title.
PZ7.G9846Chr 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2009017765

To my editor, Emily Meehan,
who always pushes me to be better

Thanks to Liza Voges, Nathan Katz, Deb Licorish,
Laurie Bushey, Nina Wallace, Janet Goodman,
Theresa Wolfe, Jane Babcock, and all the kids
who shared their deepest, darkest wishes.

The CHRISTMAS GENIE

You're probably not going to believe this story. Fine. That's okay. It's a free country. You can believe what you want to believe. Or not. But I know what happened. Because I was
there
.

Where is “there”? Lincoln School in Oak Park, Illinois. Fifth grade. This is what my class looks like.

Well, that's what my class would look like if you were hanging from the ceiling like Michelangelo and drawing a picture of it. But I have no idea why you would want to do a crazy thing like that.

That's me, in the second row on the left side, by the window. My name is Chase. My best friend is Alex. He's on my basketball team, but we're not allowed to sit next to each other because he's always cracking jokes and distracting me. So we had to be “separated.”

It's a pretty good group of kids, I guess. Well, except for Abigail, who thinks she's so great just because she's got a cool cell phone; Mia, the wet blanket; Logan, who threw my umbrella up on the roof of the school last year; and Christopher, who is just plain dumb as a box of rocks. Everybody else is relatively normal. Our teacher, Mrs. Walters, always says we're the “chattiest” group she ever had. I don't think that means we're brilliant conversationalists. It just means we talk too much.

That's her, in the front of the room. One time I saw Mrs. Walters at the supermarket and I kind of freaked out because it was like,
What is my teacher doing in a supermarket?

Okay, enough setup. None of that stuff is important, anyway. The important thing to know is that if you look at the picture, that's where we all were when this thing happened that you may or may not believe. Like I said, I don't care one way or another.

It happened just before winter vacation, on December 21. That's the winter solstice, and in case you don't know what that means, it's the first day of winter and the shortest day of the
year. It has something to do with the distance and angle of the sun. I'm kind of into science stuff. Anyway, everybody was excited about Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or whatever holiday it is that they celebrate. Nobody was really focusing too much on what Mrs. Walters was saying. We were all thinking about the presents we were going to get, the ski trips we were going to go on, and the family reunions we were going to have as soon as school let out. You know, all the holiday stuff. It's a nice time of year. Mrs. Walters put cheery decorations all over the walls of the class. Everybody was feeling good.