Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things Read online

  I shook my head. It wasn’t at all what I had wanted to say. But now I had run out of other things to say. So I had to say it.

  “I’msorrythatIdidn’tstickupforyouyesterday-inmathclassandonthebus,” I said.

  Flea blinked.

  Then she blinked again.

  I held my breath.

  “Okay,” she finally said. “I forgive you.”

  What a relief.

  So then I asked the question I’d been dying to ask, “What’s that in your backyard?”

  “C’mon,” she said. “I’ll show you.” We hurried outside.

  And there, in Flea’s backyard, in broad daylight—gulp—was a real live VOLCANO! It was HUGE. It was made of mud and dirt and something called chicken wire, but there were no chickens, only wire.

  Flea poured a bucket of vinegar and some baking soda into the top and lava bubbled out. It was a MESS! And it was AMAZING!

  After the bubbling stopped, it got kind of quiet in the backyard.

  Flea looked at me.

  And I looked at Flea.

  “What are you going to be for Halloween?” I finally asked.

  “A princess,” said Flea. “I’m always a princess.”

  “Oh,” I said. I didn’t like princesses. They are stu . . . I mean silly. Princesses make me sick. And just as I was about to say how much I hate princesses, I heard something else come out of my mouth.

  “You’d make a good princess.”

  Grow unsightly warts! How did I say that?

  “Thank you,” said Flea. “What are you going to be?”

  “A gentleman,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Flea.

  It grew kind of quiet again.

  Then she remembered her manners.

  “You’d make a good one,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Then we poured more vinegar and baking soda into the volcano. Lava bubbled out like crazy.

  “Death by volcano!” I screamed, leaping and jumping over the foamy lava.

  “Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” roared Flea, leaping and jumping like crazy too. There were plastic Minutemen and Redcoats and trucks and motorcycles and packs of ferocious tuojiango-saurus and a f lock of velociraptors that we had to save. So we did. It took all afternoon, but we saved them all.

  After we finished, Flea brought out her book, The Book on Alvin. She drew Firecracker Man saving the world from death and destruction on the side of a volcano. It was really super-duper!

  “Do you think we can do this again sometime?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said Flea. “Anytime.”

  Anytime. It sounded like something friends say to each other.

  And I blasted off toward home.

  “Alvin,” said my mother when Firecracker Man blasted into the kitchen.

  Uh-oh. The look on her face was not so great.

  “Did you put a baseball through the neighbor’s window?”

  “What baseball?” I asked innocently. “Not I.”

  “It was in her sink,” said my dad. “And it had your name on it, son.”

  I love it when he calls me that, usually.

  Alvin Ho’s Woeful Glossary

  Alvin Ho—(1) Aka Firecracker Man, (2) a gentleman-in-training.

  American Revolutionary War—Started in Concord, Massachusetts, which is hard to spell. Revolutionaries fired cannons and all sorts of gunshots at the British to get rid of them. It took a long time, from 1775 to 1783, with lots of help from France, Spain and the Netherlands. But in the end, the British went home and the American colonies became a new country.

  Anibelly—(1) Messes with my things, (2) eats my food, (3) drinks my chocolate milk, (4) generally gets in my way.

  Beethoven—(1) Aka Ludwig van Beethoven, (2) famous German composer, (3) wrote nine symphonies, one violin concerto and lots of hard stuff for the piano, (4) scary-looking.

  Boatswain—Pronounced “BO-sun.” (1) An officer on a ship in charge of the maintenance of the vessel, (2) the name of Flea’s fish.

  Brahms—(1) Aka Johannes Brahms, (2) another famous German composer, (3) born six years after Beethoven’s death, (4) loved Beethoven’s music, (5) kept a marble bust of Beethoven that looked down on him while he composed.

  bratwurst—German sausage.

  Calvin—(1) Knows everything, (2) owns everything, (3) is quite agreeable late at night.

  CarlYastrzemski—Pronounced “Ya-STREM-ski.” Nicknamed Yaz or Captain Carl. Played his amazing entire twenty-three-year career with the Boston Red Sox. He was a left fielder, a first baseman and a star hitter. He is the Red Sox all-time leader in career RBIs, runs, hits, singles, doubles, total bases and games played and is second for home runs, behind Ted Williams. His dad was a potato farmer.

  chicken pox—It’s just itchy pox. A chicken doesn’t come with it.

  Chinese radish—A vegetable that looks like a big white carrot.

  Concord, Massachusetts—(1) Birthplace of the American Revolution, (2) eighteen miles northwest of Boston, (3) home of famous dead authors (see below), (4) my home, (5) hard to spell.

  Daisuke Matsuzaka—Born in Japan in 1980 and nicknamed the Monster in Japan and Dice-K in the United States. K means strikeout! During his first season with the Boston Red Sox in 2007, Dice-K broke the Red Sox rookie record for the most strikeouts in a season, with 156. He finished the season with 201 strikeouts and became the first Japanese pitcher in history to start and win a World Series game.

  edamame—Pronounced “ed-a-MA-may.” A vegetable that looks like peas in a pod.

  feng shui—Pronounced “fung SHWAY.” A Chinese way of placing stuff, like houses and furniture and trees and rocks, so that everything looks fantastic!

  Flea—(1) A girl, (2) short for Sophie, (3) her grandpa, who couldn’t hear very well, thought her parents had said that her name was Flea when she was born.

  flybox—(1) Also called a tackle box, in which different flies, plugs, spinners, jigs, spoons, poppers, lures, hooks, lines, bobbers and sinkers are stored for use in fishing, (2) handy for holding a PDK.

  Frida Kahlo—Mexico’s most famous woman artist. When she was six she had a disease called polio. Her right leg became very thin and the kids at school called her Frida pato a palo, or Frida “peg leg.”

  gung fu—Aka kung fu or gong fu. Chinese exercises that look cool in the movies, but that break things around the house when you go crazy practicing them after watching a gung fu movie.

  GungGung—(1) Ace pitching machine, (2) ace costume maker, (3) my mom’s dad.

  Hank Aaron—(1) Aka Hammer, Hammerin’ Hank or Bad Henry, (2) set the Major Baseball League’s home run record of 755 in 1976, (3) a 1952 Topps Hank Aaron Rookie card sold for $100,000 in 2000.

  Henry David Thoreau—Pronounced “THOR-ow.” Famous dead author who loved nature. Built a small cabin in the woods and lived in it for two years before he got tired of it and moved home.

  Johnny Astro—A toy that really flies. Invented in the 1960s by toy genius Sol Friedman. Hard to find. Impossible to repair. If you break it, you might as well plan your funeral.

  kickboxing—Not real boxing. Involves punching the air while bouncing back and forth in a boxing dance. Usually done in a class at the Y.

  kimchi—Pickled cabbage that explodes in your throat and makes you cry.

  Louisa May Alcott—Famous dead author who wrote Little Women. Wrote at a small desk her father made for her. Lived in the brown house on Lexington Road. Still does.

  Minutemen—A small handpicked elite force of the Massachusetts militia, who were “ready in a minute.” They were the first to arrive at a battle during the American Revolutionary War.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne—Famous dead author who wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables and many short stories. Loved taking walks with his wife, Sophia. Lived next door to Louisa May Alcott. Still does.

  Patriots’ Day—A holiday commemorating the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the Ameri
can Revolutionary War, fought on April 19, 1775.

  Paul Gauguin—Pronounced “goh-GAN.” French painter who lived in Peru with his mom for four years from the time he was about Anibelly’s age to the time that he was my age. Then he moved back to France. When he was older, he lived in Tahiti and painted the people there, using bright colors. A friend of Vincent van Gogh.

  PohPoh—(1) My grandmother on my mother’s side, (2) good at rubbing stuff on chicken pox, mosquito bites, bee stings and scraped knees, (3) keeps an eye on GungGung.

  psychotherapy—A scary way to help you not be so scared.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson—Famous dead author who wrote many essays. Took long walks with his friend Henry David Thoreau. President Abraham Lincoln came to dinner at his home once. Lived in the big white house on Concord Turnpike. Still does.

  Redcoats—Soldiers of the British Army during the American Revolutionary War. Red was the color of their uniform.

  Tenzing Norgay—The first to climb to the top of Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary in May 1953.

  tourniquet—A tight band tied around a limb to stop severe bleeding. Used to find a vein for blood donation. Also used in the event of amputation.

  Vincent van Gogh—Dutch artist who flunked out of many different jobs before he discovered that he was a painter at age twenty-seven. He liked painting peasants and poor people. When Vincent painted at night, he stuck candles in his hat so that he could see better.

  Walden Pond—(1) Looks like a big lake to me, (2) just right for swimming, (3) in the old days, they used to harvest ice here in winter and pack it in hay and put it on a train that took it as far as Chicago, (4) Henry David Thoreau built his cabin here.

  wasabi—Pronounced “wa-SAH-be.” A green paste made from horseradish that you eat with sushi. Explodes inside your nose and makes you cry.

  William Shakespeare—Dead English author. Born after Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas, but died before the British Army wore red. Wrote lots of plays, poems, curses, everything. When he ran out of words, he made up new ones. Never lived in Concord.

  yehyeh—Chinese word for grandpop on your father’s side.

  Published by Schwartz & Wade Books

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2008 by Lenore Look

  Illustrations copyright © 2008 by LeUyen Pham

  All rights reserved.

  Schwartz & Wade Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Look, Lenore.

  Alvin Ho allergic to girls, school, and other scary things / [text by] Lenore Look; illustrated by LeUyen Pham. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: A young boy in Concord, Massachusetts, who loves superheroes and comes from a long line of brave Chinese farmer-warriors, wants to make friends, but first he must overcome his fear of everything.

  [1. Fear—Fiction. 2. Self-confidence—Fiction. 3.Friendship—Fiction. 4. Chinese Americans—Fiction. 5. Concord(Mass.)—Fiction.]

  I. Pham, LeUyen, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.L8682Al 2008

  [Fic]—dc22

  2007029456

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-84965-7

  v3.0