The Stupendous Dodgeball Fiasco

101 Ways to Bug Your Friends and Enemies
| Lee Wardlaw

101 Ways to Bug Your Parents
| Lee Wardlaw

101 Ways to Bug Your Teacher
| Lee Wardlaw

Friendship According to Humphrey
| Betty G. Birney

Island of the Aunts
| Eva Ibbotson

Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow
| Nathan Bransford

The Ogre of Oglefort
| Eva Ibbotson

The Puzzling World of Winston Breen
| Eric Berlin

The Puzzling World of Winston Breen: The Potato Chip Puzzles
| Eric Berlin

The Secret of Platform 13
| Eva Ibbotson

The World According to Humphrey
| Betty G. Birney

lives in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, with her husband and children. This is her first book; and if kids have half as much fun reading it as she had writing it, she’ll consider it a great success. Janice’s second book is titled
The Clueless Girl’s Guide to Being a Genius
. Visit her at www.janicerepka.com

is the illustrator of
Tub Boo-Boo
and
Don’t Laugh at Me
, as well as more than twenty book jackets. He lives and works in Southern California.

E
ach time a kid got hit, Coach yelled, “Out!” and pointed. The kid who got hit would have to sit on the bleachers. Phillip could hardly believe that kids with balls were purposely aiming at ones without them.

Whap!
A boy standing near the line got it in the gut.

Whack!
A girl who had turned to run got it in the back.

A ball zipped so close to Phillip, he could hear the air scream. The girl next to him twisted to avoid a low ball. She slipped, and the ball hit her as she lay on the ground. A circular red spot formed on her exposed back thigh before she staggered away.

Phillip had lost three-quarters of his team. Fewer kids meant more balls thrown his way. He caught a glimpse of the clock. Maybe he could survive until the bell. He backed himself in the far corner.

“Get the new kid,” a familiar voice yelled. It was B.B. Tyson, the hall monitor. She lobbed a screamer right at him. It barely missed. There was no place to go.

THE
Stupendous

DODGEBALL

Fiasco

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

The Clueless Girl’s Guide to being a Genius

Y
ou can’t stuff more than six clowns into a telephone booth. Eleven-year-old Phillip Edward Stanislaw had seen his dad try. But each time, a giant shoe or rubber nose stuck out, and the door wouldn’t shut. Why should today be any different?

“Welcome to the Windy Van Hooten Circus,” the announcer shouted. “Let the show begin.”

In the right ring, white-faced clowns, juggling rubber chickens, raced on unicycles. In the left ring, Helena’s Marvelous Miniature Horses balanced on their hind legs in hula skirts. Thrilled
oooohs
and
ahhhhs
poured through the tent, interrupted by thunderous bursts of applause.

Phillip yawned. He rested his head against the handle of his pooper-scooper shovel. He was standing in the exit aisle between two bleachers. If one of Helena’s horses had an “accident” during the show, it was his job to run into the ring, scoop up the mess, and dispose of it in a special trash can. That way, she wouldn’t slip.

The blended smell of elephants and hot dogs made Phillip’s stomach ache. To take his mind off it, he daydreamed about the birthday present his dad, Leo Laugh-a-
Lot, had placed on the kitchen table that morning. The box was three feet long and wrapped in leftover Christmas paper turned inside out.

It couldn’t be new circus stilts, Phillip thought. They’re too long. Juggling pins are too short. A megaphone is too wide. Acrobat gloves are too small. There were no holes in the box, so it couldn’t be a new pet for an animal act. What else could it be? He stared at a muddy spot on the ground just under the right stand. A dirty ticket stub was squashed into it.

Suddenly, Phillip thought of something that almost made him drop his shovel. Once he had found a muddy baseball card underneath the stands. The player on the card was holding a long wooden bat, exactly the size of the box on his kitchen table. Was it possible that, for the first time, his parents were giving him a gift that wasn’t circus-related?

If only I knew how to operate a bat, he thought. I hope it comes with instructions.

Since the circus never stayed in one town very long, Phillip had never been to a baseball game. Because his family chose not to own a television, he’d never even seen a game. All he knew about baseball was from the card and from a poem he had read called “Casey at the Bat.” The poem was about a great baseball player who embarrassed himself by losing a big game. Phillip did not want to embarrass himself.

What I need, he thought, is to find a regular kid who can give me some tips.

Phillip scanned the crowded bleachers and spotted a boy wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap, just like the cap worn by the man on the card. The boy ate cotton candy and watched Freckles spray Jingles with a bottle of seltzer water.
Leo Laugh-a-Lot threw a bucket of confetti, and the boy laughed.

If the boy could stay after the show, maybe he could help. Phillip would have to get a message to him. He waved to get his attention, but the boy wouldn’t take his eyes off the show.

The clowns rolled out an old-fashioned telephone booth. The phone rang and BoBo rushed in, climbed to the top, and pinned himself against the ceiling. It rang again and Freckles followed, pressing himself against BoBo. Each time it rang, another clown would enter. The acrobat clowns, Versa-Vice and Vice-Versa, piled in. Cuddles and Jingles compressed themselves in the middle, a mass of twisted elbows and knees. Finally, Phillip’s dad squeezed in. He tried to yank shut the door, but his extra-large clown rump, complete with pink satin boxers, got stuck. The booth swayed, making the audience sway with it.