Karen's New Holiday Read online

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Helen Perelman

  for her help

  with this book.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Rainbows and Chocolate Stars

  2 Being a Two-Two

  3 Shopping

  4 Calendar Check

  5 Kid Power!

  6 A Gigundoly Great Idea!

  7 Holiday Planners

  8 At the Library

  9 A Letter to Washington

  10 Hooray for August

  11 Too Many Planners

  12 How to Celebrate

  13 Spreading the Word

  14 Hello, Washington?

  15 Dog-Gone Mad!

  16 One Last Meeting

  17 One More Day

  18 Happy Augustania!

  19 Bad News, Good News

  20 Augustania Forever!

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Rainbows and Chocolate Stars

  “My turn!” I said as I threw my lucky round stone on the ground. I hopped into the first square and picked it up. I, Karen Brewer, am a very good hopscotch player.

  It was after dinner, but still light enough for us to play outside. And it was the end of summer, so the days were still long.

  Hannie Papadakis took her turn next. Hannie lives across the street and one house down. She is one of my best friends. I have two best friends. But I’ll explain that in a minute.

  Just as I was about to take my turn, I heard music coming down the street, little bells ringing a familiar tune. It was Mr. Tastee!

  “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” Hannie and I sang as we jumped up and down. We love ice cream, especially the kind from Mr. Tastee’s truck. We ran inside our houses to get money.

  “Mr. Tastee is here!” I shouted as I opened the kitchen door.

  “All right, Karen,” Nannie said. “You do not have to yell.” Nannie is always reminding me to use my indoor voice.

  “Can I have an ice cream too?” Andrew asked. Andrew is my little brother. He is four going on five. He has blond hair and blue eyes just like me. He loves to do everything I do, so of course he wanted to have ice cream from Mr. Tastee.

  Nannie gave us money, and Andrew and I ran outside. Hannie was already in line. Timmy Hsu and his brother, Scott, were paying for their ice cream.

  “Hello there, Karen!” Mr. Tastee said.

  I am a very good customer. That is why Mr. Tastee knows my name.

  “What would you like tonight?” he asked. “I have some different cones and pops. Did you notice the new sign on the side of the truck?”

  I looked over at the new sign. There were so many ice creams! Hannie and I read all the flavors. So did Andrew. (I taught him to read.) He picked the red spaceship pop. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted.

  “I am going to have a Rainbow Pop,” Hannie said as she looked over the sign.

  The Rainbow Pop looked very pretty. But there was a new chocolate cone with chocolate stars on it. Hmmm. It was a tough choice.

  “Come on, Karen!” Melody Korman said. She was behind me in line. Melody lives across the street. I guess she already knew which ice cream she wanted.

  “I am going to have the new Chocolate Stars cone,” I said to Mr. Tastee.

  Mr. Tastee smiled and winked as he handed me my ice cream. “Excellent choice, Karen. This is one of my favorites.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Tastee!” I said.

  Hannie, Andrew, Timmy, Scott, Melody, and I sat on the grass in front of my house and ate our ice cream. When it started growing dark, we chased fireflies around the yard. Fireflies are like bugs with little flashbulbs. They are very hard to catch.

  “Karen! Andrew!” Elizabeth called from the porch. (Elizabeth is my stepmother.)

  Andrew and I said good night to our friends and went inside our big house.

  Being a Two-Two

  Guess what. Andrew and I have not one but two houses. In fact, I have two of lots of things. And so does Andrew. I will tell you why.

  A long time ago, when I was little, Mommy, Daddy, Andrew, and I all lived together in the big house in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. (It is the house Daddy grew up in.) But then Mommy and Daddy started fighting all the time. Soon they decided to get a divorce, and Mommy, Andrew, and I moved to a smaller house in Stoneybrook. (Andrew and I call it the little house.)

  I still had my bedroom at the big house with Moosie, my stuffed cat, and all my toys and clothes. At the little house I had another stuffed cat named Goosie (he looks just like Moosie) and other toys and clothes. I even split Tickly, my special blue blanket, in two so I could have it at both houses.

  Soon Mommy started dating a man named Seth Engle and they got married. Now Seth is my stepfather. He is a carpenter and builds really nice furniture. He also likes animals. He has a dog named Midgie and a cat named Rocky.

  Daddy also got married again, to Elizabeth Thomas. She already had four kids. Charlie and Sam are in high school. Kristy is in eighth grade and is the best big sister ever. David Michael is seven like me. And, after Daddy married Elizabeth, they adopted my little sister, Emily Michelle, from a faraway country called Vietnam. She is two and a half and very cute. I try to be a good big sister to her. I even named my pet rat after her.

  Elizabeth’s mother came to live in the big house after Emily Michelle was adopted. Nannie helps take care of everyone and everything. She has started her own chocolate business. She works in the new addition off our kitchen. (It always smells good in there.) Her chocolates are yummy!

  Lots of pets live in the big house too. David Michael has a Bernese mountain dog puppy named Shannon. And we have a black kitten named Pumpkin. Then there are our fish. Andrew’s is called Goldfishie and mine is called Crystal Light the Second. David Michael takes care of them for us when Andrew and I are at the little house. Plus, Andrew has a hermit crab, and I have my rat. They go back and forth between the big house and the little house with Andrew and me.

  Andrew and I get to spend lots of time with both our mommy and our daddy. We switch houses every month. We spend one month at the big house, then one month at the little house. That means I get to be near one of my two best friends no matter where I am. Nancy Dawes lives next door to the little house. And Hannie lives near the big house. We call ourselves the Three Musketeers. We even have a motto. It is “All for one and one for all.”

  I have two mommies, two daddies, two cats, and two dogs. I have two stuffed cats and two bicycles, one at each house. I have two sets of toys and books and clothes. I have two best friends. I even have two pairs of glasses! (The blue ones are for reading and the pink ones are for the rest of the time.) That is why I made up special names for Andrew and me. I call us Andrew Two-Two and Karen Two-Two. (I thought up those names after my teacher read a book to our class once. It was called Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang.)

  You may think being a two-two is hard. But really it makes everything two times more fun.

  Shopping

  After breakfast the next morning I sat at the kitchen table, reading a brand-new chapter book.

  I had just finished a chapter when Nannie asked, “Karen, would you like to go to the store with me?”

  “Yes!” I cried as I jumped up from the table. Nannie frowned at me. “I mean, yes,” I said again, with my quiet indoor voice.

  “Good,” she said. “I have to go to the Paper House. And I could use your help.”

  (Ever since Nannie started her chocolate business, she is always running to the store for something.) Nannie said Mr. Morgan (he owns the Paper House) had an order ready for her. Nannie buys little white boxes from Mr. Morgan’s store to put her cho
colates in.

  I got into Nannie’s car and buckled my seat belt. Nannie drives a pink Cadillac. Charlie calls it the Pink Clinker. It is old and very big. I love to ride in the car with Nannie.

  When we got to town, we walked along the street and I looked at all the store windows. The first store was a hardware store. Its window was not very exciting. A few hammers and screwdrivers were hanging on a boring blue board. The next store was a clothing store with lots of fuzzy sweaters and long pants in the window. Nobody would wear those clothes in the summer! Where were the bathing suits and shorts?

  The Paper House was the third store. In the large window I could see lunch boxes, apples, rulers, crayons, and pencils piled in front of a long blackboard. Someone had written BACK-TO-SCHOOL SUPPLIES on the blackboard. What was going on? It was August, not September!

  “Nannie,” I said. “Why does this window have back-to-school things in it?”

  Nannie looked at the window. “Well, lots of times stores start putting up back-to-school window decorations in August.”

  “Why?” I asked. “There’s no school in August.”

  “No, there is not,” Nannie agreed. “But stores like to decorate their windows for the holidays. And since there are no holidays in August, like the Fourth of July or Christmas, some stores decorate the windows for back to school instead.”

  That didn’t seem right. I could think of plenty of decorations for August. Where were the pails and shovels? The ice-cream cones? The watermelons? There had to be holidays in August for showing off summer decorations.

  I asked Mr. Morgan about his window display.

  “We always need window displays. People buy more things when they see a nice display,” he said. “I know school does not start for awhile, but there are no holidays in August so we always make a back-to-school display.”

  No holidays in August? I couldn’t believe it. August was the best and happiest month. How could there be no holidays?

  I helped Nannie carry the bags to the car. I wanted to get home quickly. I had to check the calendar right away.

  Calendar Check

  When Nannie and I returned home, I ran into the kitchen. Kristy was sitting at the table helping Emily Michelle color.

  “Hi, Karen,” Kristy said. “Do you want to color with us?”

  “My flower,” Emily said as she held up her drawing.

  “That is a beautiful flower,” I told her.

  Usually I love to color with Kristy and Emily. But I had to find a calendar.

  I looked on the refrigerator. All of the boxes on the calendar were written in. When ten people live in a house, a calendar can fill up pretty quickly. There was so much written on the days, it was hard to see any holidays.

  “Karen, what are you doing?” Kristy asked.

  I told her about the windows and what Mr. Morgan had said.

  “We could check your dad’s calendar. It is on the desk in his office,” Kristy said. “Let’s go see.”

  I followed Kristy into Daddy’s office. His calendar was lying open on his desk. It was a big brown leather book with a different page for every day. Kristy explained that holidays were written in red ink in the page corners. We looked carefully at all the days in August.

  “Look,” I said, pointing to August second. I had already found a page with tiny red letters in the corner.

  “August second was Friendship Day!” I said. “I wish I had celebrated that day with Hannie and Nancy. That would have been a great thing to do with the Three Musketeers.”

  “You can celebrate next year,” Kristy said as she flipped through the calendar.

  “And look, Susan B. Anthony Day,” I read. “Who is she?”

  “She was a very important woman,” Kristy said. “She did a lot for our country. She fought for women to have the right to vote in elections. There is even a coin with her face on it.”

  Well, Susan B. Anthony Day wasn’t like a holiday, when you get presents or you get to dress up. Mr. Morgan could not make window displays for his store for that.

  “I’m sorry, Karen,” Kristy said. “It looks like Mr. Morgan was right. There are no big holidays in August at all.”

  Kristy went back into the kitchen to finish coloring with Emily Michelle. I sat down in Daddy’s chair and stared at the calendar. There are thirty-one days in August. But no big holidays were listed.

  August was one of my favorite months, and there was no day to celebrate. Boo and bullfrogs.

  Kid Power!

  It was raining when I woke up the next morning. For once, the big house was very quiet.

  Andrew and I played Nintendo for awhile. We raced each other in the Real Race Chase game. I picked the Princess driver and he was the Turbo Man. I won, but I let David Michael play Andrew next. I was getting a little bored. I decided to see what everyone else was doing on this rainy day.

  Charlie was at the movies with his friends, and Sam was on his paper route. Kristy was baby-sitting, and Emily Michelle was taking a nap. Nannie and Elizabeth were busy with a big chocolate order, and Daddy was working in his study. How boring.

  I read my new chapter book for awhile, and then I decided to watch my favorite television show, I Love Lucy. (Lucy and her best friend, Ethel, are so funny. I always laugh when I watch that show.)

  After I Love Lucy was over, a TV announcer said, “Stay tuned for Kid Power! Kids who make a difference! Meet the kids from Farmington, Connecticut, who used Kid Power to help clean up a park in their neighborhood.”

  That sounded good. And Farmington was in Connecticut. Just like Stoneybrook. I decided to tape the show for Nancy and Hannie. I did not want them to miss it.

  The announcer was a young girl named Julie. She was in Farmington to interview the kids who had organized the cleanup.

  “Our friends formed groups called committees,” a boy named Stephen Andrews said. “And that way we were able to make a difference in our community.”

  “What did the committees do?” Julie asked.

  Stephen spoke into the microphone again. “Each group was responsible for a different part of the day. One group organized the cleanup schedule, one group collected trash bags, and another group made fliers advertising our big cleanup.”

  A girl named Alison spoke next. “It was really cool to be a part of this project and help out. I hope that now more kids across the nation are going to get involved in their own neighborhood cleanup.”

  The camera focused again on Julie. “More than just making their neighborhood park a beautiful place,” Julie said, “these kids have sparked a campaign to clean up city parks throughout the country.” Julie explained how the kids from Farmington were reaching out to kids across America. Then she finished by saying, “They not only made a difference in their community, but they will make a difference nationally with Kid Power.”

  Suddenly I had one of my gigundoly excellent ideas! A nationally gigundoly great idea!

  A Gigundoly Great Idea!

  I called Nancy and Hannie and invited them to come over right away. I could not wait to tell them about my gigundoly great idea.

  Hannie arrived first because she lives just next door. I took her coat and umbrella. I did not want to tell her my news until Nancy was with us. Finally the doorbell rang. The Three Musketeers were all together.

  I told my friends about Kid Power! They had not seen the show so we watched the tape. I was smiling when the show ended.

  “Karen, what are you so happy about?” Hannie asked.

  “Well,” I said, “we could —”

  “Karen,” Hannie interrupted. “We do not have a park that needs to be cleaned up.”

  “Well, no,” I said, “but there is something else we can do.”

  Nancy looked at me. “What?”

  “Mr. Morgan at the Paper House always puts holiday decorations in his store window,” I started to say.

  “Oh yes, I love that store!” Nancy said. “There are great stickers in the back room.”

  “I bought a
unicorn sticker last week,” Hannie said.

  “Anyway,” I went on a bit loudly, “there are no holidays in August.”

  “Does he want us to clean up his store?” Nancy asked.

  For heaven’s sake. “No,” I said. “But he needs a holiday for August. We all need an August holiday.” Hannie and Nancy still didn’t say anything. “We could make a new national holiday with our own Kid Power!” I said.

  Nancy and Hannie just stared at me. They were speechless.

  Then Hannie said, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” I said, “that we can make a new holiday!”

  “And be on television?” Nancy said. “Like the kids in Farmington?” Nancy, like me, wants to be an actress when she grows up.

  “Sure!” I said. “We will be the founders of the holiday. Television crews will want to film us.”

  “The holiday should be really fun,” Hannie added.

  “A holiday for kids!” I said. I was glad that my friends were excited about my idea.

  “We are going to need some help,” Nancy said. “Remember, there were lots of kids in the park all working together.”

  “We can get all the kids on the street to help,” I told Nancy and Hannie. “Let’s have our first meeting tomorrow morning.”

  We were going to make history!

  Holiday Planners

  “All right, we are now starting the meeting,” I said. I looked around my backyard. Hannie and Nancy were sitting next to me. Scott and Timmy Hsu were kicking a soccer ball with David Michael, Bill Korman, and Linny Papadakis. Maria Kilbourne was showing Andrew her dog Astrid’s new trick. (Maria loves dogs. And Astrid is the mother of David Michael’s dog, Shannon.)

  “Have you started yet?” Melody Korman said as she ran into the backyard.

  “No, you are right on time,” I replied. “Everyone, sit down here in front of me. I will tell you what this is about.”

  I liked being in charge of the group. I explained about seeing the Kid Power! show and how we could make a difference. “We can make a national holiday for August,” I said. I opened my new yellow notebook to the first page. It was my official national holiday notebook. “Does anyone have any ideas for the holiday?” I asked. I was all ready to take notes.