If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period by Gennifer Choldenko

Moonstruck, the True Story of the Cow Who Jumped Over the Moon, is a lovely story of what someone can accomplish when she puts her mind to it.

God, I hate my giggle.My daughters and I fell in love with a Gennifer Choldenko picture book before we ever started to read her novels for young readers. When I turn to leave, the black kid is standing next to me. Oh, great: now she's getting weird in public, too. She's hunting down the red car, going to drive right over it and staple it to the ground. When my mom sees the man is sticking, she shoots forward again like she's on the chase. Her hand rotates a million miles an hour, gesturing to this poor huddled pedestrian, but the pedestrian won't move. She swerves around a big SUV, guns it, then pounces on the brakes, coming to a squealing, screeching halt. She pounces on the accelerator and her car flies forward with the door open and the seat belt clanking the side.

'Must be new.' The red car pulls out of the drop-off and my mom's head snaps to the front. 'Do you know that boy, that blaAfrican American kid?' Her head cranes toward a guy who just gotout of a red sports car. 'Kirsten!' She unrolls the side window and beckons with her hand. ,' my mom says when my feet hit the pavement. Nobody wants to see a gigantor butt coming out of a car first thing on a Monday morning, that much I know. I also consider my butt and how it will make its way out of our car. And all I can think about as my mom drives us up to the drop-off is how I really, really, really want to have a bunch of classes with Rory this year.

Kippy said there was a colony of worms living in the laundry hamper and my mom said: 'Leave your muddy shoes outside.' And I said Brad Pitt had invited me to a slumber party and my mom said: 'You already had your snack.' It was funny for a while. We even tried a little experiment on them. They stopped seeing my little sister, Kippy, and me, and they definitely stopped hearing what we said. Besides Rory being gone all summer, my only other friend in the whole world, Nellie, moved away and my mom and dad fought all the time. They probably don't even have crap on Maui. For starters I hardly saw my best friend in the whole world, Rory. One Kirsten This is lame but I'm actually looking forward to school this year, because every day this summer was like crap: dog crap, cat crapI even had a few elephant crap days.

If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period by Gennifer Choldenko