I am in second grade. My teacher is Mrs. Sarf. She's big and tall. Sometimes she scares me.
I'm learning to spell. Some days we stand around the room in single file. Mrs. Sarf says a word and when it's our turn we have to spell it out loud. Sometimes two words sound the same but mean different things and are not spelled the same. Did you know a slice of pie is spelled "piece" of pie? But at Christmas when you hear "peace on earth, good will to men" it's not spelled like piece of pie?
At the beginning of the year Daddy and I walk to the public library. It's really close to our house. It's in a green building. The police office is in the same building. The library is on the end near Banks Blvd. Daddy gets a library card. I look at all the books in the children's section. There are a lot of books to read.
One day I find a book on the library shelf that is the same book we have in our desk at school! It's for when we do science. But we don't take the book out of our desk much. I have Daddy check it out for me. I read the whole thing. It's easy because it's mostly pictures of birds and stuff.
I can't wait until the day when we have "show and tell." I have something to talk about. The girl in my class who knew how to spell piece and peace reads a lot and is smart. She might want to know about the public library in the green building. For "show" I bring the science book from the library.
My teacher doesn't like my "show and tell." I want to sink through the floor when she is mad at me in front of my friends. She calls my house. I should not take out any of my school books from the public library. I will be bored at school if I read those books at home. That's what she tells my mom. I thought my mom would be scared of my teacher, too. But she's not. Mom tells my teacher it's my teacher's job to make sure I'm not bored at school. And it's good thing I like books.
Although we rarely used our science book, one spring day we take a "science field trip." We walk to our teacher's house. Her husband trapped a beaver. The beaver's skin is stretched out on a board. The little feet are in a small cardboard box on the lawn.
Science wasn't just pictures of pretty birds and animals. I learned more about that later in high school - when we dissected fetal pigs in biology class. Oh, the smell of formaldehyde...
