Jasper John Dooley, Star of the Week Read online

  For Sophie Anastasia Elizabeth Campbell,

  a little watermelon — C.A.

  ISBN 978-1-55453-989-5 (ePub)

  Text © 2012 Caroline Adderson

  Illustrations © 2012 Ben Clanton

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of Kids Can Press Ltd. or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  This is a work of fiction and any resemblance of characters to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Kids Can Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative; the Ontario Arts Council; the Canada Council for the Arts; and the Government of Canada, through the BPIDP, for our publishing activity.

  Published in Canada by

  Kids Can Press Ltd.

  25 Dockside Drive

  Toronto, ON M5A 0B5

  Published in the U.S. by

  Kids Can Press Ltd

  2250 Military Road

  Tonawanda, NY 14150

  www.kidscanpress.com

  Edited by Sheila Barry

  Designed by Rachel Di Salle

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Adderson, Caroline, 1963–

  Jasper John Dooley / written by Caroline Adderson ; illustrations by Ben Clanton.

  For ages 7–10.

  ISBN 978-1-55453-578-1 (bound)

  I. Clanton, Ben, 1988– II. Title.

  PS8551.D3267J38 2012 jC813’.54 C2011-904726-8

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  About the Author and Illustrator

  More great reading from Kids Can Press!

  Chapter 1

  Jasper John Dooley was in the basement getting ready for a busy week. The kid who was the Star of the Week was always busy and, starting tomorrow, Jasper was the Star. Jasper, the Star! Tomorrow! He’d looked forward to tomorrow for a very, very, very long time.

  Mom came down with a load of rumpled clothes in her arms. “Yay!” Jasper said. “Laundry!”

  “Aah!” she said. “Jasper John, you scared me! What are you doing down here? Why aren’t you playing outside?”

  “I’m the Star of the Week,” he said.

  “You’re the Star of the Week tomorrow,” Mom said, opening the lid of the washing machine. “Today you’re a boy who needs to breathe fresh air.”

  The door of the washing machine looked like a big square mouth. Mom began stuffing the clothes down into it, feeding it dirty socks and T-shirts and soggy towels. “Did you see the schedule?” Jasper asked her.

  “It’s in the kitchen.”

  “On Monday, the Star gets to do Show and Tell,” Jasper said. “Only the Star gets to do Show and Tell. I’ll Show and I’ll Tell. Everybody else will Look and Listen.”

  “Still,” Mom said, “it’s such a beautiful day. Here you are hiding in the basement.”

  “I’m not hiding. I’m collecting the lint off the dryer screen.”

  Jasper had already pulled the screen out of its slot and scraped off the lint. Now the lint sat on top of the dryer, a flowery-smelling, gray, linty blob. “It’s my Show and Tell,” Jasper said. Then, in case Mom hadn’t read the schedule very closely, in case she had just magnetted it to the fridge with the store coupons and emergency phone numbers and the long list of Things To Do that never got crossed off, only longer, Jasper reminded her what was going to happen that week at school.

  “Monday, Show and Tell. Tuesday, Family Tree. Wednesday, Science Experiment. Thursday, I Share My Talent. And on Friday …”

  He stopped so he could enjoy a shiver of excitement.

  “On Friday, I bring a Special Snack for everybody to eat while they’re writing Compliments to me.”

  “It’s going to be a wonderful week, Jasper,” Mom said as she poured the detergent into the hungry mouth of the washing machine. Jasper watched her. “Detergent is ketchup to a washing machine,” he said, but she wasn’t listening. She said, “You have your lint, Jasper. Now go outside.”

  “When’s the laundry going to be finished?” he asked.

  “In a few hours. Why?”

  “I need more lint.”

  “Oh, Jasper,” Mom said, and she pointed to the basement door.

  Jasper went upstairs to get his lint box from his room. Out in the backyard, he sat with his legs in a V in the grass and carefully opened the box. He stuck his nose in it and sniffed that special flowery lint smell, the fabric softener clean-clothes-start-of-a-new-day smell that he loved.

  His Nan had given him the box. It was red with a gold latch and compartments inside for bracelets and earrings and rings. But Jasper wasn’t using it for jewelry. He was filling each of the compartments with lint. He packed the new blob in one of the gray-lint compartments. Lint with colored flecks went in a different compartment. There was also a compartment for pocket lint and a very, very special compartment that had only a tiny bit of lint in it because that kind of lint was rare and hard to collect. It was belly-button lint, and the only place Jasper could get belly-button lint was in his dad’s belly button.

  After he had sorted his lint, he took the box inside and told his mom he was going across the alley and one house down to see what his friend Ori was doing. “Good,” she said. “Play outside.”

  A sound like the wa-wa-wa of a car alarm floated across Ori’s yard. Ori lived with his mother and father, just like Jasper. Except Ori’s mom was expecting a baby and for a month now had been going around looking like there was a watermelon stuffed under her shirt. Once, when Jasper mentioned it to Ori, Ori said, “Maybe it is! Maybe it is a watermelon!” Since then, whenever they talked about the baby, which wasn’t very often, they called it the watermelon. Jasper rang the doorbell, but nobody answered because of wa-wa-wa-wa coming from the open kitchen window. A watermelon or a baby? Jasper wondered. He was pretty sure he knew which one it was.

  He knocked loudly. Finally, Ori came to the door wearing a winter hat with earflaps. The strings that held the flaps down were tied in a bow under his chin.

  “Hi,” Ori said.

  “Hi,” Jasper said.

  “What?” Ori said, cupping an earflap.

  Jasper asked, “Is that the Watermelon crying?”

  Ori stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “What did you say? I couldn’t hear you.”

  “Did the Watermelon come?” Jasper asked.

  “Unfortunately.”

  “When?”

  “Friday, but they only brought it home today.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Are you sure you want to?” Ori asked.

  When Jasper said he did, Ori made a face. He motioned for Jasper to cover his ears. The boys went inside pressing their hands to the sides of their heads. Ori pressed his earflaps.

  “Is it a girl watermelon or a boy watermelon?” J
asper asked, but Ori didn’t hear him.

  In the living room, Ori’s dad was walking around in a circle. All his walking had flattened a path in the living room carpet. He rounded the circle with his arms full of crying, which was when Jasper saw that Ori’s dad had orange things sticking out of both ears. They looked like baby carrots but turned out to be earplugs.

  “Jasper!” Ori’s dad said. “Look at Ori’s new sister!” He stopped and held the baby out.

  Jasper came over. Purple! A purple baby! Somehow he had expected her to be red, like the inside of a watermelon.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?!” Ori’s dad yelled.

  “Yes,” Jasper said. He liked her little purple face and the way her tongue pushed back in her mouth and quivered. “She doesn’t have any teeth,” Jasper said, but nobody heard him.

  “Come on,” Ori said, tugging Jasper by the arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I like her!” Jasper told Ori as they went back down the hall. “She’s purple!”

  “The thing is,” Ori said, “all she does is cry.”

  Just then, Ori’s mother came out of the bedroom wearing orange earplugs, too, and a really tired face. She smiled at Jasper. She patted Ori’s hat. And she still looked like she was carrying a watermelon!

  Jasper and Ori went outside. “Did you remember I’m the Star of the Week tomorrow?” Jasper asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, I am,” Jasper said. What a good Show and Tell a baby would be, he thought, and suddenly he felt very, very glad that Ori had already been the Star of the Week and brought a model airplane for Show and Tell.

  The rest of the day Jasper couldn’t stop thinking about Ori’s baby sister and her little wrinkled purple face. He wondered how he could ever have imagined she was a watermelon. A watermelon! She was the opposite of a watermelon — small and purple. She was a plum!

  At supper that night, he announced that he wanted a baby, too. “A purple one,” he said. “The purple ones are the nicest.”

  “Nicer than the green ones?” Dad asked.

  “There’s no such thing as a green baby.”

  “Where would we get a purple baby?” Mom asked.

  “You grow it in your stomach and then you go to the hospital and have it taken out,” Jasper told her. “Everybody knows that.”

  Mom patted her stomach. “But I don’t have anything growing in here right now.”

  “I bet they have extras at the hospital,” Jasper said.

  Dad told Jasper, “I remember when you were born. I got to hold you for a minute before the nurse whisked you off. I used to think that all babies were the same. But when I looked for you later in the nursery, I knew which one you were right away.”

  Jasper had heard this story before. “I was the one with lots and lots of black hair sticking out all over my head. Why didn’t you call me Licorice?”

  “Licorice?” they said.

  “When we get a baby, I’m going to name her Plum,” Jasper said.

  “Who wants dessert?” Mom asked, getting up from the table. She seemed to be changing the subject.

  “I do!” Dad and Jasper called.

  “But it’s just too bad!” Jasper said when Mom came back with the ice cream and three bowls.

  “What?” she asked. “What’s too bad?”

  “That we don’t have Plum right now. If we did, I could bring her for Show and Tell tomorrow. That would be the best Show and Tell anybody ever saw.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Dad said. “Yours is pretty good, too. Some of those kids won’t ever have seen belly-button lint before.”

  Chapter 2

  The next morning, Jasper got out of bed the second he woke up. Usually, he fell back to sleep a few more times to watch the end of his dream, but today he didn’t want to get the lates. Today he was the Star of the Week.

  He went to the kitchen and stared at the hands on the oven clock. Seven five, ten, fifteen, twenty. Seven twenty-five. There was lots of time not to get the lates. He went to Mom and Dad’s room and, standing by their bed, spread his arms wide. “Presenting — the Star of the Week!”

  Mom sat up clutching the covers around her neck. “Ah! Jasper John!”

  “It’s just me,” he told her. “The Star of the Week.”

  Dad opened one eye at the clock radio on the bedside table. “It’s five-thirty,” he said.

  “Oops,” Jasper said. “I got the hands wrong. Again.”

  Dad rolled over and covered his head with his pillow. “Go back to bed, Jasper,” Mom said.

  “I don’t want to get the lates,” Jasper said.

  “Just go,” Mom said, making shooing motions with her hands. “We’ll make sure you don’t get the lates.”

  “I’m always getting the lates.”

  “Go!”

  “Okay,” Jasper said, backing out of the room, “but don’t forget — I’m the Star!”

  Jasper went back to his bed. He tried to fall asleep again, but he was too excited. Why not just go? Just go to school right now? So he got out of bed and ran the block to school. A big banner covered the front of the building. JASPER JOHN DOOLEY, STAR OF THE WEEK! All the kids in the school, not just the kids from Jasper’s class, all the kids were leaning out the windows waving little flags and chanting, “Jasper! Jasper! Jasper!” Jasper ran up the steps. He pulled and pulled on the door handle, but it wouldn’t open. Now all the kids were chanting, “Late! Late! Late!” Then Mom woke Jasper, which was a good thing because in the dream he was still wearing his pajamas.

  Chapter 3

  Ms. Tosh took the star out of the top drawer of her desk. It was a fabric star with gold sparkles glued all over it. She safety-pinned it onto Jasper’s chest. “It’s yours to wear for the day,” she said.

  “Even lunch and recess?” the Star asked.

  “Yes. But when the bell rings at the end of the day, give it back. It will be safer here in my drawer.”

  The first special thing the Star got to do was the calendar. When Ms. Tosh asked the month, the day of the week and the date, anybody could put up his hand to answer. But only the Star got to slide the right cards into the slots on the calendar. Jasper enjoyed this, but what he was really looking forward to was Show and Tell, which came next.

  Jasper carried his box to the front of the classroom. All the kids leaned over their tables, curious about what Jasper had brought. Jasper smiled. He pushed his chest out so the star would show better and turned to Ms. Tosh, so she could introduce him.

  Then the door to the classroom opened, and Ori slipped inside. He looked really tired. He looked like nobody had made him wash his face. “Hurry, hurry, Ori,” Ms. Tosh told him, which sent him scurrying over to the table he shared with Leon and Isabel. “We’re about to start.”

  Jasper was surprised that Ori was late. Ori lived across the alley and one house down from Jasper. Jasper lived the closest to the school, and Ori the second closest. Ori never got the lates the way Jasper did. Jasper got the lates about twice a week, even though he lived just one block away. But not today. Today Jasper was the Star, and the Star had arrived in plenty of time with his box of lint under his arm.

  Now the Star of the Week stood at the front of the room with Nan’s old jewelry box in his hands. Once all the kids were settled again, which took a long time, Ms. Tosh said, “Our Star, Jasper, has brought us something for Show and Tell. What a wonderful box, Jasper. I wonder what’s in it.”

  Ori’s hand went up.

  “What’s your guess, Ori?” Ms. Tosh asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ori said. “I just wanted to tell you that my mom brought the baby home yesterday.”

  “A baby! How wonderful! A girl or a boy?”

  “A girl,” Ori said. “The thing is, she cries all, all, all the time.�
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  “Babies do that,” Ms. Tosh said.

  Jasper touched the star on his chest to make sure it hadn’t fallen off. It was still there. Jasper was still the Star waiting to do Show and Tell.

  “And does she have a name?” Ms. Tosh asked Ori.

  “We’re trying to decide,” Ori said. “My dad likes Rachel. My mom likes Anna.”

  Jasper lifted Nan’s old jewelry box and tapped it twice with his finger. That was what Ms. Tosh always did when Jasper lost focus. She would come over to his desk and tap his worksheet.

  “I like Noisy,” Ori said.

  Jasper put up his hand. Finally, Ms. Tosh noticed him and said, “Yes, Jasper? Do you have something to say about Ori’s new baby sister?”

  Jasper had been about to remind Ms. Tosh that he was the Star of the Week, but now he accidentally answered her question. “I saw her yesterday. She’s purple.”

  “That’s because she’s crying all the time,” Ori said.

  “Am I still the Star?” Jasper asked.

  “Of course you are, Jasper. It’s just that a new baby is so exciting. Now Ori will have to bring in a picture to add to his Family Tree. Kids, do you see what Ori did? He left a space on his Family Tree for his new sister.”

  Ms. Tosh went over to where Ori’s Family Tree was taped to the wall. Ori had made the best tree out of all the Stars in the class so far, with pictures of his family members cut into the shape of leaves. Even though Ori lived with just his mom and dad, like Jasper, he had a lot of aunts and uncles and even more cousins. He had as many relatives as a tree has leaves, though most of them lived far away. Ms. Tosh pointed to the bottom of the tree, next to the leaf-shaped picture of Ori. Glued there was a leaf without a picture that Jasper hadn’t noticed before.

  “So what’s in your box, Jasper?” Ms. Tosh asked.

  Finally!

  Jasper let the kids try to guess what was in Nan’s old jewelry box. They guessed jewelry. They guessed marbles. They guessed money.

  “You’re never going to guess,” Jasper told them.