Muggie Maggie Read Online Free

she had shrunk because all the sixth graders stared at her while the teacher, a tall man with a ferocious beard, read the note.
    â€œThere’s the cootie,” she heard a boy whisper.
    Maggie tossed her hair. The class tittered. Maggie wondered whether the boys called their teacher’s beard a cootie motel.
    The man glanced at Maggie, grinned, and wrote a note on the back of an old spelling test. Then he crossed out his name on the ragged envelope, replaced it with Mrs. Leeper’s name in one of the few spaces left, and handed it to Maggie, who was grateful to escape to the hall.

    When she peeked, Maggie found her own name, just as she had in other notes, but this time she found it twice. The note read:

    Maggie, desperate to read, discovered this teacher was careless about joining letters. If she had time, maybe she could puzzle them out, but she knew that she was expected back in her own classroom. Sending someone to find her would not make Mrs. Leeper happy.
    Friday evening, Jo Ann telephoned to ask Maggie to spend the night at her house.
    Maggie said she couldn’t. Jo Ann wanted to know why. Maggie said she had to help her father.
    â€œI thought he did some kind of office work,” said Jo Ann.
    â€œHe does,” said Maggie, thinking fast. “I know how to use our computer.” She had not lied, not exactly, but she felt guilty.
    That weekend, Maggie studied every bit of cursive writing she could find: her mother’s tipping-over-backward grocery list, Ms. Madden’s neat handwritten notes mixed in with papers her father brought home from the office, anything. She did not try to read her father’s writing. She knew it was hopeless.
    Maggie spent most of her time in her room with her door closed. With Kisser’s nose resting on her foot and some old work papers in front of her, she frantically practiced cursive, including the difficult capitals:

    â€œWhat are you doing, Maggie?” asked her mother through the door.
    â€œNothing,” answered Maggie, aware that her mother felt children were entitled to privacy and would not open the door. Letting her parents know she had changed her mind would make Maggie feel ashamed, like admitting she had been wrong.
    Maggie worked hard, and by Sunday evening she agreed with what Mrs. Leeper had been saying all along: Many cursive letters are shaped like printed letters. She knew she could read cursive as long as it was neat. She practiced her signature with her letters leaning into the wind:

    When she had finished, Maggie’s face was flushed, her hair more tousled than usual, but she could write cursive. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but anyone past the second grade could read it. She went to her father, who was working at the computer. “Daddy, listen to me,” she said, and her voice was stern.
    Mr. Schultz turned from the keyboard. “Okay, Maggie, what’s up?”
    â€œIn writing, neatness counts,” Maggie informed him.
    â€œI expect it does,” he agreed.
    â€œThen you should learn to close your loops and put the right number of peaks on your u ’s and write neatly,” said Maggie.
    â€œFunny, Ms. Madden says the same thing,” said Mr. Schultz. “I’ll try. Cross my heart.”
    Maggie was not sure she believed him. Next, Maggie went to her mother and announced, “You should make your writing lean the other way like it’s supposed to and stop putting silly circles over your i ’s.”
    Mrs. Schultz smiled and pushed Maggie’s hair back from her flushed face. “I don’t know about that, Angelface,” she said. “Everyone says my handwriting is distinguished.”
    Maggie was tired and cross. “Well, it’s wrong,” she said, and she sighed so hard that Kisser looked anxious. Grown-ups were so hard to reform—maybe impossible.

Chapter 8
    O n Monday, Maggie looked at the words Mrs. Leeper had written on the chalkboard and