The Candy Smash

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  The 4-O Forum

  Poetry Terms

  Poems

  Acknowledgments

  Permissions Credits

  The Lemonade War Series

  One School, One Book

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2013 by Jacqueline Davies

  Illustrations by Cara Llewellyn

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Houghton Mifflin Books for Children is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  "Mushrooms" from THE COLOSSUS AND OTHER POEMS by Sylvia Plath, copyright © 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962 by Sylvia Plath. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission.

  Additional credits appear on [>].

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The illustrations are pen and ink.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Davies, Jacqueline, 1962–

  Candy smash / by Jacqueline Davies.

  pages cm—(The lemonade war series ; book 4)

  Summary: "Explores the distinctive power of poetry and love— fourth grade style"—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-544-02208-9

  [1. Poetry—Fiction. 2. Love—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Brothers and sisters—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D29392Can 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012033305

  eISBN 978-0-544-03567-6

  v2.0913

  For Tracey Adams an agent with a the size of a house—and a Valentine's Day baby, to boot.

  Chapter 1

  Zing!

  onomatopoeia (n) when a word sounds like the object it names or the sound that object makes; for example: sizzle, hiccup, gurgle

  If Evan had known what would be hidden in his shoebox later that day, he might not have minded decorating it so much.

  But for now, he stared at the box in disgust.

  He hated projects like this. Cutting projects, gluing projects. Projects with scissors and paper and markers and tape. Why did he have to decorate the shoebox anyway?

  "Can I have that?" asked Jessie on her way back to her desk group. She pointed at the ruler on Evan's desk. In her hand, she held her box. All four sides and the top of the box were covered in red construction paper, and the slot on top was outlined with a perfectly measured crinkle-cut rectangle of white paper.

  "Why? Aren't you done?" asked Evan.

  "No!" said Jessie. "I made spirals for the sides and flowers and hearts for the top." Evan looked over at her desk, which was in the group next to his. Lined up in neat rows were four perfect paper spirals, four curly paper rosettes, and twenty identical paper hearts. Jessie's decorations were so precise, they looked like they came from a factory.

  It was at times like this that Evan wished his little sister wasn't in the same fourth-grade class with him. Jessie was good at math and writing and science and just about everything that counted in school. She had even skipped the third grade. Why did she have to be so smart?

  Evan slumped a little in his seat. "Go ahead, take it."

  Jessie reached for the ruler, then said, "That's sloppy. You should cut the paper so it's even. You want me to do it?"

  "No, I don't want your help, Miss Perfect."

  Jessie shrugged. "Suit yourself." Then she went back to her seat.

  "What are you going to put on your box?" asked Megan, who was returning to her desk on the other side of the room after showing her box to their teacher, Mrs. Overton. Her long ponytail swung from side to side as she walked up to his desk.

  Evan felt his face go hot. It was bad enough that his shoebox looked like nothing—now Megan Moriarty had to go and notice it.

  "I don't know," he said. "I don't like flowers and hearts and things."

  "Me neither," said Megan. "I put pictures of cats all over mine. See? This one looks like Langston!" Megan pointed to a picture on her box that looked almost exactly like Mrs. Overton's cat. Langston was a twenty-one-year-old gray Persian who was seriously overweight. There were laminated pictures of him posted all over the classroom, with speech bubbles coming out of his mouth saying COOL CATS READ; NUMERATOR ON TOP, DENOMINATOR ON BOTTOM; AND A SIMPLE MACHINE IS A MECHANICAL DEVICE THAT APPLIES A FORCE, SUCH AS A PLANE, A WEDGE, OR A LEVER. In every picture, Langston looked like he'd just coughed up a hairball. Evan's favorite was the one posted right above the daily homework assignment. In giant black letters it said BLEH!

  "There are some sports magazines in the Re-use It bin," said Megan. "You want to see if there are any pictures of basketball players?"

  "No. Well. I guess," said Evan, embarrassed that he was tongue-tied. When Megan and Evan were in the same desk group, neither one of them could get any work done. Mrs. Overton had called it a lovely problem, and Evan was both disappointed and relieved when she'd changed the seating arrangements.

  Whenever he talked to Megan, he got a strange spinning feeling in his stomach, and it was getting worse every day. It was just like the time two winters ago when he and his mother hit a patch of black ice in their old Subaru. The car spun around three hundred sixty degrees before smashing into a guardrail. No one was hurt, and even the car was okay once it had been repaired, but Evan would never forget that feeling of spinning and spinning completely out of control, waiting for the smash. Being around Megan felt like that.

  Evan walked over to the Re-use It bin. It turned out that there were tons of photos of basketball players, including one of Evan's favorite, Rajon Rondo, who was famous for having played the fourth quarter of a playoff game one-handed after he dislocated his elbow in the third. Evan quickly cut out five photos and stuck them on the four sides and top of his box.

  "Done," he said, putting the cap back on his glue stick and shoving his markers into his desk.

  Mrs. Overton, who'd been working at her desk, glanced up at the clock on the wall. "Hey, look at the time." She picked up the shekere that sat on the edge of her desk and shook it a few times, making the gentle sh-sh-sh sound that meant it was time to transition to a different activity. "We're running late. Leave your boxes on your desks and come to the rug. It's time for the Poem of the Day."

  Evan smiled. He would never admit it, but this had become his second favorite part of the day—after recess. Ever since coming back from winter break, Mrs. Overton had taken the time each day to read a poem—just one poem. A serious poem. Not like the silly poems his third grade teacher had read to them last year. Evan liked those, too—they made him laugh—but these poems that Mrs. Overton read were different. They were like music, and they made something deep inside of him go zing.

  Jessie raised her hand. "Mrs. Overton, can I skip the Poem of the Day so I can work on my newspaper?" Jessi
e had started her own classroom newspaper called The 4-O Forum. She'd already published two issues, and now she was working on the third. She planned to hand out the next edition on Monday, exactly one week from today, which happened to be Valentine's Day. It was a tight deadline, and Evan could tell she was feeling the pressure.

  "No, Jess. I'll give you some time during morning recess. For now, come and join the class." When everyone had gathered on the rug sitting crosslegged, Mrs. Overton said, "Today I'm going to read a poem by E. E. Cummings." At the top of a blank page on the classroom easel, she wrote: "E. E. Cummings."

  "Is he dead?" asked David Kirkorian. This had become the first question the kids in 4-O asked whenever Mrs. Overton introduced a new poet. Some poets were still alive—like the one who wrote the poem about the tree frog whose throat was swollen with spring love or that other one who wrote about playing basketball with his friend Spanky—but a lot of them were dead. Some of them had been dead for centuries.

  "He died about fifty years ago," said Mrs. Overton. A few kids nodded. A long-time dead. The really famous poets like William Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson were all dead.

  "What's the poem called?" asked Salley.

  "It doesn't have a title."

  "What do you mean?" asked Jessie. Evan could see a frown creeping across her face. Jessie did not like poetry, even though she'd won a poetry-writing contest in first grade. It was the only subject in school that Evan had ever heard her say she hated.

  "Some poems don't have titles, and E. E. Cummings didn't title most of his poems."

  "A poem is no good without a title," said Jessie. She stuck her foot out and retied her sneaker with several sharp, jerky movements. "And what kind of a name is E.E.?"

  "It's initials, right?" said Jack. "Like J. K. Rowling. It stands for something."

  "Easter Eggs!" said Megan.

  "Eleven Elephants!" said Ben.

  "Extra Elbows!" said Ryan. He was sitting next to Evan, and he poked his elbow into Evan's chest, which got everyone in the class laughing.

  Mrs. Overton admitted that she had no idea what E.E. stood for, but she would find out and report back later. "In the meantime, let's take a look at the poem."

  She turned the page on the easel to show the poem that she had copied out earlier.

  because it's

  Spring

  thingS

  dare to do people

  (& not

  the other way

  round)because it

  's A

  pril

  Lives lead their own

  persons(in

  stead

  of everybodyelse's)but

  what's wholly

  marvellous my

  Darling

  is that you &

  i are more than you

  & i(be

  ca

  us

  e It's we)

  Evan stared at the poem. He hardly breathed. He had never seen anything like it. It was kooky! The way the words fell down the page like rocks tumbling over the edge of a cliff. He liked that "Spring" almost rhymed with "thingS" and the crazy way the tall, proud capital Ss stood like towers on either side of those words. And why was the word "because" broken up into four pieces? It made him feel as if words weren't so strict and stern and unchangeable as they had always seemed. You could mix them up. You could rearrange them any way you liked. You could play with them—like Legos! You could make them do whatever you wanted. Evan looked at that poem and felt something inside of him go zing.

  Jessie pointed at the easel. "That is the worst poem I have ever seen in my whole life!" she shouted. "That poem is all wrong."

  "Wow," said Mrs. Overton. "It sounds like you're having a strong response to this poem, Jessie. Tell us what you think."

  "It's full of mistakes," said Jessie, standing up and marching over to the easel. "That S is not supposed to be capitalized. You never capitalize just the last letter of a word. And there's a space missing after the parenthesis. And the words 'it's' and 'April' are broken up with no hyphens. And there's no such word as 'everybodyelse.' He just made that up!" Jessie's hands were flying all over the easel, pointing, accusing the poem. She stabbed her finger right into the heart of the poem. "And the word 'I' is always capitalized. Always."

  Evan nodded his head. That was the rule.

  "So why do you think he did it?" asked Mrs. Overton.

  "Because he's dumb," said Jessie, returning to her spot on the rug and plopping down in disgust.

  "Well," said Mrs. Overton, "Mr. Cummings graduated from Harvard and wrote his first book when he was twenty-eight. So I don't think he was dumb. Maybe he had a reason for writing his poems in this way. What do you think?"

  The kids in 4-O stared at the poem. Some of them moved their mouths silently as they read it to themselves.

  "Maybe he was telling a joke," said Tessa.

  "Or maybe he was trying to make it look like a kid wrote it!" said Adam. "Maybe he was using a strong voice, like you told us about when we wrote our memory stories."

  "I bet he just scribbled it out fast like that, and then he didn't bother to check it over," said Paul. Evan knew that Paul hated to copy his first drafts.

  "These are all good ideas," said Mrs. Overton. "Anybody else have an idea?"

  Evan looked at the poem and thought about the joy he felt when he read it, the looseness and freedom of those crazy mixed-up words, the tumbling recklessness of the way the poem spilled down the page.

  "Maybe," said Evan, "he's sort of ... telling us that there aren't any rules or ... you know, you don't have to do things a certain way, just because that's how everyone else does them? You know?"

  Mrs. Overton nodded her head. "I think that's exactly what Mr. Cummings is challenging us to think about. Rules and conventions. Because what is this poem really about?"

  The whole class stared at the poem. The room was silent, except for the gentle scrabbling sound of the gerbils in their cage as they chewed on their toilet paper tubes. Slowly, Megan raised her hand, and Mrs. Overton nodded at her.

  "It's about love," said Megan.

  "That's right," said Mrs. Overton. She turned the heavy paper of the easel so that a fresh, blank page was showing, and then in all capital letters, she wrote,

  Chapter 2

  Smash

  smash (n) something that is wildly popular, an unqualified success, a blockbuster

  Jessie was the first to come in from morning recess, because Mrs. Overton had said she could return to the classroom five minutes early to work on her newspaper. If it were up to Jessie, she would skip recess every day. It was just a waste of time. She'd rather spend the time reading a book or working on a project. Running around outside! Ridiculous!

  And speaking of ridiculous, Mrs. Overton had given them a new assignment: each one of them had to write a poem about something or someone they loved. A love poem! Fourth grade was definitely taking a turn for the worse.

  Jessie sat down at her desk and pulled out her reporter's notebook. It was the same kind of notebook her father used: long and thin, spiral-bound, hard-covered, with light blue lines running across each narrow page. She liked using the same notebook he did—liked to think of both of them scribbling notes, writing articles, and changing the world. It made her feel closer to him, even though she hadn't seen him in over a year and he was halfway around the world.

  Jessie moved her Valentine's shoebox to the corner of her desk, then tore out four pages from her reporter's notebook and spread them out. She picked up her pencil and wrote a list of the articles that would appear on each page.

  Pages two and three were easy to fill because they contained the newspaper's regular features: the recap of the month's weather using all the data that 4-O collected from the weather station mounted on the roof of the gym; a comic strip about an alien, written and illustrated by Christopher Bay; a few sports articles written by different kids in the class who were on various town teams; and Megan's latest installment of her ad
vice column, "A Friend in 4-O," the most popular feature in the newspaper.

  Dear Friend in 4-O,

  Someone in my desk group keeps kicking my chair. I've asked him to stop about a million times, but he still does it. What is his problem????

  Signed,

  Tired of Being Kicked

  Dear Friend in 4-O,

  My mom packs snacks I hate. No one will trade with me, these snacks are so bad. I'm always hungry until lunch.

  Signed,

  Starving and Sad

  Dear Friend in 4-O,

  I don't get fractions! Seriously! No matter how many times Mrs. Overton explains them, I just don't get them. Help me!!!!

  Signed,

  The #1 Enemy of Fractions

  But Jessie still had no idea what her front-page story would be. And her dad had taught her that the front-page story was the most important part of the whole newspaper. She needed something that would really grab her readers' attention. Something shocking. Something huge. She was determined to make this edition of The 4-O Forum a smash, and to do that she needed a prizewinning front-page story.

  Jessie knew she had to do some investigative reporting, which is when a reporter uncovers facts that no one else knows and publishes them so the world will be a better place. Jessie's dad had been an investigative reporter before he went back to being a war correspondent. Right now, he was in Afghanistan, but when Jessie was a baby, he had written articles about a big chemical company that was causing pollution and a state senator who was taking bribes. He'd won an important prize for writing the story about the senator, but he'd made a lot of people angry, too. Sometimes Jessie thought that was why he left.