ird School #11 My We Dan Gutman Pictures by Jim Paillot To Emma Contents 1 Never Kiss Your Mom in Public 1 2 Mrs. Kormel’s Secret Language 7 3 My Head Almost Exploded 18 4 Are We There Yet? 27 5 The Middle of Nowhere 33 6 The Nude Kid’s Dad 41 7 Fighting Evil Under the Bus 46 8 Striker Smith’s Final Battle 51 9 We Are Survivors 60 10 Mrs. Kormel Is Driving Us Crazy 72 11 We Finally Meet the Nude Kid 79 About the Author and the Illustrator Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher 1 Never KissYour Mom in Public My name is A.J. and I hate school. Do you know which is the worst day of the week? If you ask me, it’s Monday. Because Monday is the start of five days of school in a row. That’s horrible! Tuesday and Wednesday aren’t so great either. 1 Thursday is a pretty good day, because then we only have one day of school left before the weekend. Friday is really good, because that’s when the school week is over. But the best day of the week is Saturday. I play peewee football on Saturday, and we don’t have school again for two whole days. Too bad it was Monday morning. I was waiting in front of my house for the school bus with my mom. “You be a good boy, A.J.,” my mom told me. “I will.” 2 “Don’t get into any trouble, A.J.,” my mom told me. “I won’t.” “Remember to raise your hand when you want to talk, A.J.,” my mom told me. “I will.” “Don’t shoot straw wrappers at the girls, A.J.,” my mom told me. “I won’t.” My mom told me about a million hundred other things I wasn’t allowed to do until I saw the yellow school bus coming around the corner. “Mom, I promise not to have any fun at all,” I said. “Bye!” The bus pulled up. Mrs. Kormel, the 3 bus driver, pushed a button and made the little STOP sign pop out the side of the bus so the cars on the street will stop. We call it the magic STOP sign. That thing is cool. “Give Mommy a kiss, A.J.” No way I was going to kiss my mother in front of all the kids staring out the bus window. That’s the