Karen's Dinosaur

  My friends and I found our trip partners and climbed onto the bus. My trip partner was Hannie. (Well, she was my trip partner until we reached New York. Then Maxie would be my partner.) Hannie and I sat near the front of the bus. Nancy and Audrey sat behind us.

  When we had settled down, Mrs. Hoffman said, “Boys and girls, remember the trip rules we have been talking about. Especially remember what to do if you get lost. Find a police officer or an adult you can trust. Do not wander away by yourself. Stay where you are, and I will find you as fast as I can. And now … have fun! By the way, there is a bathroom at the back of the bus.”

  “A bathroom?” Hannie said to me. “Wow, this is the best bus ever!”

  Skyscrapers

  Hannie and I sat back in our seats. The bus ride was going to be more than two hours long. But we had brought plenty of things to do.

  “Let’s play cat’s cradle first,” said Hannie.

  So we did. We made string figures as Stoneybrook slipped by outside the windows of the bus. Then we played the license plate game with Nancy and Audrey. We had left Stoneybrook, and we were riding down the highway. We should have seen lots of different plates. But …

  “This is boring,” complained Audrey. “All we see are license plates from Connecticut and New York. I want to see something good. Like something from Canada.”

  But we did not.

  So Hannie pulled out her magnetic checkers game. She and I played two games. Then I took a little nap. Well, actually it was a big nap. The next thing I knew, Hannie was tugging at me.

  “I think we are almost there!” she said.

  I blinked my eyes. I looked out the window. We were still flying down the highway. But in the distance I could see a group of tall buildings.

  “Look! Skyscrapers!” I exclaimed.

  “A bridge!” added Hannie.

  “Boys and girls, we have almost reached New York City,” announced Mrs. Hoffman. She was standing near the driver. “Very soon we will arrive at your pen pals’ school,” she added. Then she sat down again.

  The driver turned onto a smaller highway. A little while later, he turned off the highway, and I saw that we were driving through city streets. Block after block went by. The streets were lined with stores and apartment buildings and schools. I looked at the street signs. Now we were traveling down a street called Central Park West. We passed 91st Street, then 90th, then 89th, 88th … a few blocks later, our driver slowed down. He turned right. I saw that we were on a quiet street. Most of the buildings were just a few stories high. They looked like a row of little houses. The driver pulled up in front of one of the buildings. A sign by the door said Park West School.

  “Here we are!” called Mrs. Hoffman.

  Hello, Maxie!

  Mrs. Hoffman stood at the front of the bus. “Okay, class,” she said. “Please stay with your partners until we reach Miss Mandel’s room. Remember our trip rules. Also remember that Park West is a school like any other, so please follow our school rules here, too.”

  “Hello?” called a man. He was waiting on the steps to Park West. “Are you Mrs. Hoffman?”

  “Yes,” replied Mrs. Hoffman.

  “I am Mr. Winter. I am going to be one of the room parents on our trip to the museum today. Miss Mandel asked me to show you to her classroom. Are you ready to come with me?”

  “We certainly are,” said Mrs. Hoffman.

  Two by two, my classmates and I hopped off of our wonderful bus. We lined up in a double row. Mr. Winter led us through the doors to the school. The hallway inside looked like the hallway in Stoneybrook Academy. It was lined with pictures and drawings. I saw a display case full of trophies. And then I saw a staircase. It went up and up and up. Park West School was not as wide as my school, but it was a lot taller.

  Mr. Winter began climbing the staircase. We followed him to the second floor. (Addie’s mom took Addie to an elevator.) On the way up, I looked out the window. All I could see were the buildings across the street.

  Soon we were standing outside a door marked 23. A sign on the door read Miss Mandel — Grade 2. Mr. Winter opened the door for us. And there was Miss Mandel.

  “Welcome!” she said. “Come on in.”

  I felt excited and a little nervous, so I gripped Hannie’s hand. I stepped through the doorway. I found myself in a room that looked a lot like our classroom, just a little smaller. Our pen pals were sitting at their desks. They were smiling at us. I looked for somebody with red hair. And there she was, in the third row.

  “Hello, Maxie!” I called.

  “Hello, pen pal!” she replied.

  My friends and I greeted our pen pals. I saw that, just like when our pen pals had visited Stoneybrook Academy, two chairs were at each desk. This was so the pen pals could sit together.

  I hurried to Maxie’s desk, and sat next to her.

  “Hello,” I said again. “I brought you a present.”

  “Cool,” said Maxie. “Thanks.” Then she added, “I brought you a present, too.”

  We opened our presents quickly. (Maxie gave me a package of markers.) Then Miss Mandel said, “Girls and boys from Stoneybrook, as you know, our class has been learning about dinosaurs, too. We would like to show you the projects and displays we have been making. So stay with your pen pals and walk quietly around our room. My students will tell you what they have been doing.”

  Maxie showed me around the room. And then … Miss Mandel took us on a tour of the school. We walked two by two again, but this time with our pen-pal partners. We started at the top of the school and worked our way down. Guess what. Maxie’s school is four stories high. It does not have a gym. It has a tiny playground. For sports the kids mostly go to Central Park. For recess they go to the playground, or they can play in the street. During school hours, the street is blocked off. Cars cannot drive on it, so the kids can play there safely. Maxie’s school has a kitchen, but no cafeteria. The kids eat in their classrooms.

  When the tour was over, Miss Mandel led us back to her room. She looked at her watch. “Eleven o’clock,” she said. “Who is ready to go to Central Park?”

  “I am!” everyone shouted.

  “Okay. Find your things, and let’s go.”

  Central Park

  My classmates and our pen pals and I gathered our things. Two by two we walked into the hallway, down the stairs, and through the door of Park West School. Then we set off for the park.

  We did not have to walk far. We walked to a corner. A light at the crossing said DON’T WALK. So we waited. When it said WALK, we crossed the street. We walked to another corner. And guess what. We had almost reached the end of the street. Ahead of us was a low wall. Beyond it were lots of trees. I looked at a street sign. We had come to Central Park West again.

  “There it is,” said Maxie. “There is Central Park.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  Maxie pointed ahead of us. “Right there.”

  “Where those trees are? That is the park? It is huge.” The trees spread away from me to the left, to the right, and straight ahead as far as I could see.

  “Yes,” agreed Maxie. “It is quite huge.”

  “Do we climb over the wall?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” said Maxie as we crossed the street and turned the corner. “We will go to a park entrance. It is just a few blocks away.”

  I glanced at Maxie. I wondered if she was bragging. She seemed to know an awful lot about the park. But Maxie did not seem to be bragging. In fact, she was peeking into her lunch bag.

  “What did you bring?” I asked.

  “Tomato and lettuce sandwich, a banana, and chips. And a juice box. What did you bring?”

  “Peanut butter and jam sandwich, an apple, and carrot sticks. And a surprise. Part of the surprise is for you.”

  “Cool,” said Maxie.

  We turned into the park then, and all of a sudden — just like that — I did not feel as if I were in a city anymore. Of course, I could still hear horns honking. And I could
still see skyscrapers. But I could also smell new grass and leaves and flowers. I could see flowers, too. And I could feel the coolness of the park.

  We walked along a path and a road, and soon Mrs. Hoffman said, “Girls and boys, do you remember when Ms. Colman read Stuart Little to you?”

  “Yes,” we all cried.

  “Well, here is the pond where Stuart has his adventure in the boat.”

  “This pond?” I cried. “This very pond?”

  “This very pond,” said Mrs. Hoffman.

  “Excellent.” I had loved the story about the mouse named Stuart.

  We walked some more until Miss Mandel said, “Now we are going to see something about another wonderful book. Let me see if you can guess which book I mean. I am thinking of the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts and the White Rabbit and — ”

  “Alice in Wonderland!” Sara called out.

  “Right,” said Miss Mandel. “Look over there.”

  We looked where Miss Mandel was pointing and saw a big statue of Alice herself. Kids were climbing all over it. Grownups were taking their pictures. My friends and I ran to it, and we climbed on it, too.

  Mrs. Hoffman and Miss Mandel let us play for awhile. Then Miss Mandel called, “Lunchtime!”

  “Where are we going to eat?” I asked Maxie.

  “Hmm. I am not sure. There are lots of good picnic spots,” she replied.

  So we walked along. We passed roller skaters and some people dancing and a man playing tin drums. Finally Miss Mandel said, “Here we are.”

  Picnic in the Park

  We had reached a big grassy field. On the paths nearby I could see people on skates and bicycles and Rollerblades. Other people were walking their dogs or jogging. But the field was almost empty.

  Miss Mandel and Mrs. Hoffman spread out some blankets and sheets. They let us sit wherever we wanted. Nancy and Hannie and I sat on a blanket with our pen pals. Nancy’s pen pal is named Eli. Hannie’s is named Jen.

  Eli looked around at the rest of us. He frowned. “Um, too many girls,” he muttered. He stood up. “No offense, Nancy,” he said. Then he hurried over to a blanketful of boys.

  Nancy looked hurt. So I said, “All girls is better anyway.”

  “I guess,” said Nancy. Then she glanced at the boys. They were holding a burping contest. She grinned. “I mean, definitely.”

  Nancy and Hannie and Maxie and Jen and I opened our lunches. We spread them out in front of us.

  “Who wants to trade?” I asked. “I will trade anything.” (Except for the lollipops. I had hidden those.)

  “Me!” called Nancy and Hannie and Maxie and Jen.

  Nancy traded her peanut butter and honey sandwich for Maxie’s sandwich. I traded my apple for Jen’s peach. Jen traded her crackers for Hannie’s Fritos. Maxie traded her banana for Jen’s Oreos. Hannie traded her bologna sandwich for my carrot sticks. Then Nancy changed her mind about Maxie’s sandwich and they traded back, and Maxie traded the sandwich for Jen’s cheese slices. But I do not think Jen or anyone else really wanted that lettuce and tomato sandwich. It was very boring.

  Our traded lunches were completely different from the ones we had started out with.

  Jen crunched into the boring sandwich. She wrinkled her nose. “Ew. This is like a salad between slices of bread.”

  “Brachiosaurus would have liked it,” said Nancy. “Brachiosaurus was a plant-eater. That’s the dinosaur Eli and I chose.”

  “Jen and I chose triceratops,” said Hannie.

  “Karen and I chose ornitholestes,” said Maxie.

  “Triceratops looked like a big rhinoceros,” said Jen.

  “Ornitholestes means ‘bird robber,’ ” I said.

  “Brachiosaurus won burping contests,” said Nancy, and we laughed.

  I ate my sandwich and looked around the park. I saw a girl throwing a Frisbee to a dog. I saw a man holding a Discman and dancing on his Rollerblades. I saw a group of little kids taking a walk with their teacher.

  I decided I loved Central Park. There was so much to see.

  “You know,” said Maxie, “millions and millions of years ago, dinosaurs might have lived right here.”

  “In Central Park?” exclaimed Hannie.

  “Well, it was not Central Park then,” said Maxie. “It was just land.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe here in this very spot, ornistholestes went around stealing innocent little birds.”

  “Did ornistholestes really steal birds?” asked Jen.

  “Well, the scientists think maybe ornistholestes hunted birds,” I said.

  My friends and I looked around. I knew we were all imagining the park as it might have been long ago, with dinosaurs roaming it. I shivered. The thought was deliciously scary.

  We finished our lunches then. I gave Maxie her chocolate lollipop and bit into mine. We were just taking the last bites of them when Mrs. Hoffman said, “Okay, everybody. It is time to go to the museum.”

  “Yes!” I cried.

  The Biggest Museum

  My friends and I gathered up our trash. Miss Mandel showed us a litter can and we threw our garbage in it. Then the teachers folded up the sheets and blankets, and we kids picked up our backpacks and jackets and things.

  “Pen-pal partners!” called Miss Mandel.

  I grabbed Maxie’s hand. Two by two we walked through the park again. I saw that we had returned to the big street called Central Park West. We walked along it until I heard Maxie say, “There it is.”

  This time she was pointing across the street to an enormous stone building. It was one of the biggest buildings I had ever seen. It was about a hundred times bigger than the art museum in Stoneybrook.

  “It — it is huge!” I whispered.

  “It has to be,” replied Maxie. “Just think. An entire apatosaurus is in there. Plus other dinosaurs. And animals and collections and jewels and — and, well, a lot of other things.”

  Wide stone steps led up to the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History. In our two-by-two line we climbed them.

  “We are really supposed to use a different entrance,” I heard Miss Mandel say to Mrs. Hoffman. “But I want the kids to see the main entrance.” (Addie and her mom and pen pal used another entrance, though, so Addie would not have to go up all those steps.)

  A few moments later, I understood why Miss Mandel wanted us to see the main entrance. We had stepped into a large, dark, hushed room with high ceilings and tall, tall columns. I felt as if I were in a palace. I just looked and looked. I could not even say anything.

  Miss Mandel spoke to a woman behind a desk. Then she joined the rest of us again. “Okay,” she said. “Before we go to the dinosaur halls, we will take a quick tour of the museum. Most of the kids in Mrs. Hoffman’s class have not been here before. My students have been here several times. But you do not mind walking through it again, do you?” (Miss Mandel was smiling.)

  “No!” cried her students.

  And Jen said, “Can we go see the gems and minerals?”

  “And the meteorites?” asked Eli.

  “The skeleton hologram?” asked Maxie.

  “The poison dart frogs?” asked Jamal.

  “Not real ones,” Maxie whispered to me.

  “Oh, good,” I whispered back.

  “Can we go to the gift shop?” asked Pamela.

  “We will try to see as many things as we can,” replied Miss Mandel.

  “But we will not have time to go to any of the gift shops,” added Mrs. Hoffman.

  No gift shops? I thought. Boo and bullfrogs.

  “All right, let’s go,” said Miss Mandel.

  We walked through a room and soon I saw, far above my head … an enormous blue whale. The whale was a model. It was 94 feet long. We walked all around the first floor. We walked through an insect collection, and the minerals and gems collection, and the meteorite displays, and displays of birds and mammals and about Native Americans.

  On the second floor we saw lots more birds
and animals. (They were not alive — they were stuffed — but they looked very real.) We saw displays about Asian peoples and South American peoples and African peoples.

  “I wish we could spend more time here,” said Miss Mandel, “but we must hurry through. We must go to the dinosaur halls so you can begin your projects. I just want you to have a look at the museum.”

  On the third floor we saw birds, African mammals, primates, and reptiles and amphibians. We saw displays about more Native Americans.

  At last Miss Mandel said, “Boys and girls, we are about to go to the fourth floor. That is where the dinosaur halls are. Is everybody ready?”

  ”Ready!” we said.

  And we began to climb the stairs.

  The Dinosaur Halls

  Guess what we saw as soon as we had climbed to the fourth floor. Another museum gift shop. We had seen several in the museum, but Mrs. Hoffman and Miss Mandel had hurried us past each one.

  “Mrs. Hoffman, can we just go to this gift shop? Puh-lease?” I asked. I could see dinosaur things inside. And I had a pocketful of spending money. I had been saving my allowance for weeks.

  “Karen, I am sorry,” said Mrs. Hoffman, “but we do not have time to go into the stores. We truly do not. We have just enough time to work on our projects now. Then we will have to hurry to our bus. We have a long ride back to Stoneybrook.”

  Double boo and bullfrogs. I had thought Mrs. Hoffman might let some of us at least peek into the gift shop. But no. A few moments later, though, I forgot about the gift shop.

  “Boys and girls,” said Miss Mandel, “welcome to the Halls of the Dinosaurs. The saurischian dinosaurs are over here. The ornithischian dinosaurs are over there.”

  I peered into the Hall of the Saurischian Dinosaurs. I gasped. The very first thing I saw was a skeleton of apatosaurus. And it was not just a little model skeleton. It was the size of a real apatosaurus. It was 86 feet long. In display cases were fossils and bones and skeletons and skulls of other dinosaurs. I could not believe my eyes.