ird School #6 My We Dan Gutman Pictures by Jim Paillot To Emma Contents 1 Boring, Snoring Mr. Loring 1 2 Goody Two-Shoes Andrea 7 3 The One-Man Funky Groove Machine 19 4 The Plot to Get Rid of Mr. Hynde 33 5 Mr. Hynde Gets Funky 39 6 Beauty and the Beast 54 7 K-i-s-s-i-n-g 59 8 The Play 68 9 TV, at Last 79 10 And the Winner Is . . . 85 11 One Last Song 89 About the Author and the Illustrator Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher 1 Boring, Snoring Mr. Loring My name is A.J. and I hate school. I hate reading. I hate writing. I hate arithmetic. But there’s one horrible subject that I really hate more than anything else. Music. Music is so dumb! Music is the most 1 boring subject in the history of the world. Why do we need music class in school, anyway? It’s not like I’m going to grow up to be a singer. When I grow up, I’m going to be a professional dirt bike racer. In first grade last year, the music teacher, Mr. Loring, made us sing all these totally corny songs from prehistoric times, like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.” Mr. Loring loves boats, I guess. He’s weird. He’s about a million hundred years old, and he has long gray hair. Mr. Loring told us that when he was a kid back in the last century, TV wasn’t even invented yet. Can you imagine living in a world with- 2 out TV? It must have been horrible! I would die if I didn’t have TV. Mr. Loring’s favorite song for us to sing was “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?” You know the song: Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? A.J. stole the cookie from the cookie jar. Who me? Yes you. Couldn’t be. Then who? Ryan stole the cookie from the cookie jar. I used to like that song, but Mr. Loring made us sing it so many times that I 3 never wanted to eat another cookie for the rest of my life. Mr. Loring’s other favorite song was “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.” That song got really old too. If any monkeys ever jumped on my bed, I would