ird School #5 My We Dan Gutman Pictures by Jim Paillot To Emma Contents 1 Fizz Ed Is the Coolest 1 2 Smarty-pants and Dumbhead 4 3 Fun , Fun , Fun with Miss Small 14 4 A Dumb Balancing Act 24 5 Howdy , Pardner! 29 6 The Truth About Miss Small 38 7 Fizz Ed Is Dumb 45 8 Ghost in the Graveyard 52 9 Fit as a Fiddle 65 10 Cooties and Clog Dancing 72 11 Grown-ups Are Weird 84 About the Author and the Illustrator Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher 1 Fizz Ed Is the Coolest My name is A.J. and I hate school . Well , I hate that reading and writing and arithmetic part of school , anyway . That stuff is for the birds! There’s only one thing about school that I like . Fizz Ed . 1 Fizz Ed! I love Fizz Ed! Fizz Ed is the coolest! Fizz Ed isn’t even like school at all. Fizz Ed is what you would be doing if you didn’t have to go to school . If you ask me , school would be cool if we could just have Fizz Ed all day long and forget about all that boring reading and writing and arithmetic stuff . Well , actually , to be honest , I’ve never had Fizz Ed . At my school , the Ella Mentry School , we didn’t have Fizz Ed last year when we were in first grade . But my friend Billy around the corner goes to a different school . Billy’s in third grade , and he told me that at his school they play dodgeball and basketball and 2 football in Fizz Ed . They get to do anything they want . Man , I wish I could go to Billy’s school instead of boring old Ella Mentry School . I’ve been waiting forever until I got to second grade , when we would have Fizz Ed . “Okay , everybody , it’s time to line up , ” my teacher , Miss Daisy , announced one morning after we pledged the allegiance . “Line up for what?” we all asked . “Fizz Ed!” Miss Daisy said . “We’re going to meet Miss Small in the gym .” “Yippee!” 3 2 Smarty-pants and Dumbhead “Yippee!” I shouted . “Hooray!” shouted my friends Ryan and Michael . We all whooped and hollered and high-fived each