Penelope Crumb Read Online Free Page A

I’m going to make it through the rest of the day without Miss Stunkel sending a note home.
    So, during recess, when everybody is outside playing and Miss Stunkel is eating her pickled hamsandwich (because that’s what teachers eat) in the teachers’ lounge, I sneak back into the classroom. I am an excellent sneaker. Stepping onto a chair, I pull a No. 2 Hard drawing pencil and eraser from my back pocket and get to work on my nose. And when I’m done, I can practically hear Mister Leonardo say: “Yes indeed, a mighty fine work. Much improved.”
    And he would be right.
    After recess, my eyeballs have no trouble paying attention to Miss Stunkel when she scribbles on the chalkboard. Especially when she pulls out a plaid hat with earflaps from her pocket and slides it on. Like Miss Stunkel’s all of a sudden worried that the chalk dust might make the faces in the drawings start sneezing on her head.
    I give Patsy Cline a look that says, Miss Stunkel Has Gone and Lost Her Marbles. Patsy’s eyes get wide, and the next thing I know, Miss Stunkel’s got a magnifying glass up to her face. “Who am I?” she says.

    “You’re Miss Stunkel,” says Angus Meeker.
    I roll my eyes and try my hardest to hold back a
duh
. Then I raise my hand.
    “Well, of course,” says Miss Stunkel. She puts the magnifying glass real close to her face now, which makes her eyeball look so big and bulgy that I can see the red squiggly lines in the white parts. “But who am I
now
?”
    I raise my hand higher still.
    “I am a detective,” she says, without giving me a chance. “And you all are going to be detectives, too. I want you to do some digging and find out about your family history.” She hands Angus a box of small magnifying glasses and tells him to pass them around. “Maybe your family came here from another country, or maybe your family has special celebrations or traditions.”
    Angus Meeker tries to hand me a magnifying glass that’s got a crack in it, but I push his hand away and take a good one from the box. I hold it up to my eye, and through the looking glass everythingis great big: my toolbox, the Hairy Stink Eye that Angus is giving me, the hole in Miss Stunkel’s panty hose.
    Then Miss Stunkel pounds on the chalkboard at what she’s written:
    Become a Detective!
    1. Discover what you don’t know about
your family. Find out about your family’s
traditions and customs.
    2. Make a coat of arms for your family.
Use pictures or drawings to show your
family’s history.
    “You will take what you’ve learned about your family,” she says, “and make a coat of arms.”
    “An arm coat?” I say. “You mean with elbows and everything?” Angus Meeker laughs, but I know he doesn’t know any more about it than I do.
    “Penelope Crumb,” says Miss Stunkel, “you know my rule. Pupils in my classroom must raise their hands if they want to say something.”
    I raise my hand like a good pupil and say, “Whose arms are they? And how do you put them on a coat?” Because that seems like kind of a creepy thing to do.
    Miss Stunkel takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. She looks just like Mom does when we’re halfway to the store and she realizes she left her grocery list on the counter. Then Miss Stunkel opens her eyes again. She explains that a coat of arms is not a coat made of arms or elbows at all. It’s a picture, or a bunch of pictures, usually drawn on the shape of a shield, that show things about a family. A family’s history, for example, she says.
    Well. Somehow that doesn’t seem as good.
    “And put some time and thought into this art project,” says Miss Stunkel, “because one of your coats of arms will be selected for display at the Portwaller-in-Bloom Spring Festival. So make it pop.”
    Good gravy. If I won, lots of people would come to see what I made. Just like Leonardo.
    Right away I start thinking. I tap my finger onmy head to wake up my brains. My family is the kind that doesn’t have any