Miss Kraft Is Daft!
Read Miss Kraft Is Daft! Online
Authors: Dan Gutman
To Tony Grisolano
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4. It Takes Brains to Be a Sub
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6. The Big Bang
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7. The Truth about Miss Kraft
11. The Most Amazing Trick Ever
About the Author and Illustrator
All about Snot
My name is A.J. and I hate snot.
Isn't snot gross? Liquid gunk comes out of your
nose
! How could it
not
be gross?
Last week my teacher, Mr. Granite, who is from another planet, came to school sneezing, wheezing, and coughing. His nose was red. He looked terrible.
“Are you sick, Mr. Granite?” asked this crybaby girl named Emily.
“My head is all stuffed up,” said Mr. Granite, and then he blew his nose into a tissue.
Well, he didn't
really
blow his nose into the tissue. If he did that, he wouldn't have a nose anymore. He blew the
snot
from his nose into a tissue. Then he threw the tissue into the garbage can.
Ewwww!
I thought I was gonna throw up. That's almost as disgusting as blowing the snot
straight
into the garbage can!
*
“Excuse me,” Mr. Granite said, “I need to go get more tissues.”
While Mr. Granite was out of the room, the class had a very interesting discussion.
“If your head is all stuffed up,” asked Alexia, this girl who rides a skateboard all the time, “I guess that means your head is full of snot.”
“No, it's not,” I said. “Get it? No, it's snot?”
Nobody laughed at my joke, so I pretended that I never made it. If you ever tell a joke and nobody laughs, just pretend that you never made the joke and keep talking. That's the first rule of being a kid.
“A head can't be full of snot,” I explained, “because if it was full of snot, there would be no room for your brain.”
“That wouldn't be a problem with
you
,” said Andrea, this annoying girl with curly brown hair, “because you don't
have
a brain!”
“Oh, snap!” said Ryan, who will eat anything, even stuff that isn't food.
“Your
face
doesn't have a brain,” I told Andrea.
I knew that didn't make any sense, but I couldn't think of anything else to say.
“Maybe our heads are always making
more
snot,” said Michael, who never ties his shoes.
“Or maybe our brain takes up half of our head, and the other half is made of snot,” said Neil, who we call the nude kid even though he wears clothes.
“Maybe our brains turn
into
snot as we get older,” I suggested. “So when we get
really
old, our heads are
completely
full of snot.”
We had to end this discussion because Mr. Granite came back into the class with a box of tissues. He was still sniffling as we pledged the allegiance and did Word of the Day.
“Let's get to work,” said Mr. Granite. “Turn to page twenty-three in your math books.”
Ugh. I hate math. I'll do
anything
to get out of math.
Mr. Granite made a big honking noise with his nose.
“Maybe you should go home, Mr. Granite,” I suggested. “You'll feel a lot better.”
(And we won't have to do math!)
“Nice try, A.J.,” he replied. “Page twenty-three is my favorite math lesson. But every time I try to work on it with you kids, we get called to an assembly. Well, I checked, and there's no assembly today. I'm not going to let a little cold stop me fromâ”
He didn't get the chance to finish his sentence because an announcement came over the loudspeaker.
“All classes, please report to the all-purpose room for a surprise assembly.”
“Not again!” shouted Mr. Granite.
He was so mad, I thought he might jump out the window.
No More Mr. Nice Guy
We had to walk a million hundred miles to the all-purpose room for the surprise assembly. I don't know why they call it the
all
-purpose room, because you can't use it for bungee jumping.
Our principal, Mr. Klutz, was up on the stage with our vice principal, Mrs. Jafee, and our school counselor, Dr. Brad. They're usually smiling and giving us high fives when we walk in for an assembly. But not this time. All three of them had on mean faces.
“What's up with
them
?” I whispered as we sat down.
“It looks like they got up on the wrong side of the bed,” whispered Andrea.
“What difference does it make which side of the bed you get up on?” I asked.
“It's just an expression, Arlo,” said Andrea, rolling her eyes. She calls me by my real name because she knows I don't like it.
“Maybe somebody died,” whispered Ryan.
Mr. Klutz, Mrs. Jafee, and Dr. Brad were all wearing T-shirts that said BOGS on them.
“What do you think BOGS stands for?” whispered Neil the nude kid.
“Big Ostriches Go Slow,” guessed Ryan.
“Boring Old Geezer Society,” guessed Michael.
“Body Odor Gets Stinky,” guessed Alexia.
“Be on Guardâ”
I didn't get the chance to finish my sentence because Mr. Klutz held up his hand and made the shut-up peace sign. Mrs. Jafee tapped on the microphone. Everybody stopped talking. It was so quiet in the all-purpose room, you could hear a pin drop.
That is, if anybody brought pins to school and started dropping them. But why would anybody do a dumb thing like that?
“We are disappointed in you children,” said Mrs. Jafee. “Once again, Dirk School got the award for having the best behavior of the month.”
Dirk School is on the other side of town. That's where all the genius kids go. We call it “Dork School.”
