Gooney Bird and the Room Mother by Lois Lowry

1.

    It was early November. Mrs. Pidgeon's second grade students were hard at work on their Pilgrim mural, which had been laid out on the floor. All of the desks had been pushed to one side to make room, and the second-graders were on their hands and knees, working with crayons.
    Gooney Bird Greene was right in the middle, as usual.
    "I like to be right smack in the middle of everything," Gooney Bird always said.
    The children's shoes were lined up in the coatroom because Mrs. Pidgeon had suggested that it would be wise to take them off. If they walked on the edge of the mural, their shoes would leave marks.
    "We always take our shoes off at home," Keiko had said as she untied her sneakers, "because my family came from Japan, and in Japan people never ever wear shoes in the house."
    One by one the children had removed their shoes. Gooney Bird took the longest because she was wearing hiking boots that laced halfway up to her knees. When, finally, her boots were unlaced and removed, everyone could see that Gooney Bird was wearing one red sock and one yellow one.
    "Gooney Bird's socks don't match!" Malcolm called out, pointing.
    "Of course they don't," Gooney Bird said. "I hardly ever wear matching socks."
    "Doesn't your mother roll your socks neatly into balls when she takes them out of the dryer? Doesn't she match them up very carefully?" Beanie asked.
    Gooney Bird thought about that. She looked down at her own feet and wiggled her toes, one set of toes in a red sock, one in a yellow. "No," she said. "My mother puts all of my clean socks in a basket on the floor of my closet. And every day I choose two. Some days I feel like matching, but most days I don't.
    "Most often," she went on, "wearing matching things gives me a feeling of ennui."
    "Oh, my," said Mrs. Pidgeon. She went to the board and wrote ENNUI in big letters. "Class? You know what to do."
    All of the second-graders took their dictionaries out of their desks.
    At the beginning of the school year, the classroom had only one dictionary, which sat on Mrs. Pidgeon's desk, next to her coffee mug.
    But Gooney Bird Greene, the new student, had arrived in October. Gooney Bird had very strong opinions about things. She had brought her own very large dictionary from home. On her first day in the classroom, she announced that she thought that every second-grader should have a very large dictionary.
    Mrs. Pidgeon, who was not accustomed to Gooney Bird yet, smiled. "We've always just used this one," she said, picking up the dictionary from her desk. It was slightly dusty. "The school provided it. And it's pretty old. But the school budget doesn't allow for bigger or better dictionaries."
    "If someone provided newer, more interesting dictionaries, one for each child, would you use them?" Gooney Bird asked.
    Mrs. Pidgeon laughed. "Yes," she said. "Of course I would."
    "Give me one week," Gooney Bird said.
    Exactly one week later, a very heavy box containing twenty-two very heavy dictionaries was delivered to Mrs. Pidgeon's classroom by a man who had tattoos and big muscles. He brought the box in on a wheeled dolly.
    "How on earth did you accomplish this, Gooney Bird?" Mrs. Pidgeon asked as she unpacked the dictionaries and passed one to each student.
    "I planned my work," Gooney Bird said, "and then I worked my plan."
    "What was your plan?" Barry Tuckerman asked as he examined his thick new dictionary.
    "First I put on the right outfit."
    Everyone giggled. They had known Gooney Bird Greene for only a short time, but each day she had worn a different outfit, and some of her outfits were amazing.
    "What did you wear?" asked Keiko. "Pajamas and cowboy boots?" That was what Gooney Bird had worn on her first day at school.
    "Of course not. This was for a businesslike visit. I wore my long, black, up-to-the-elbow gloves, my silver wet-look ski pants, a T-shirt with a picture of Albert Einstein on it, and my straw hat with a small artificial flower. I think the flower is a