Ivy & Bean Bundle, Books 4 - 6 Read online

  Book 4

  For Liz and Morgan, babysitter and babysat —A. B.

  For Callum and Harrison —S. B.

  Book 5

  To Sally, who is nothing like Nancy. —A. B.

  For Sarah, Angus, and Anna, who are never, ever bad. —S. B.

  Book 6

  For Esme and Megan, friends from the beginning —A. B.

  For the other Ivy and her brother Moss —S. B.

  Text © 2008 by Annie Barrows.

  Illustrations © 2008 by Sophie Blackall.

  All rights reserved.

  Band-Aid is a registered trademark of Johnson & Johnson.

  Butterfinger is a registered trademark of Societe des Produits Nestle S.A.

  M&M’s is a registered trademark of Mars, Inc.

  Milk Duds is a registered trademark of The Hershey Company

  Tootsie Roll is a registered trademark of Tootsie Roll Industries, Inc.

  The illustrations in this book were rendered in Chinese ink.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  eISBN: 978-1-4521-1342-5

  Chronicle Books LLC

  680 Second Street, San Francisco, California 94107

  www.chroniclekids.com

  CONTENTS

  Book 4: Take Care of the Babysitter

  TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

  DISASTER TWINS

  THE SPECIAL EXPERIMENT

  WHO’S IN CHARGE?

  THE UNDERSHIRT OF FREEDOM

  WHERE ARE YOU, MISS PEPPY-PANTS?

  THE DOOR IN THE CEILING

  UH-OH

  A WORLD OF TROUBLE

  ONE IS SILVER AND THE OTHER’S GOLD

  JUST DESSERTS

  Book 5: Bound to Be Bad

  A PAIN IN THE KAZOO

  TOUGH COOKIES

  BIRD BRAINS

  A CRUMMY PLAN

  A GOOD BAD IDEA

  THE WORST WORD IN THE WORLD

  BEAN, QUEEN OF BAD

  FROM BAD TO WORSE

  BEAN OVERBOARD!

  THE REVENGE OF DINO

  GOOD AND SOGGY

  Book 6: Doomed to Dance

  BALLET OR BUST

  DIP, DIP, CRASH!

  BAD NEWS BENEATH THE SEA

  SQUIDS IN A FIX

  GERMS OF HOPE

  TIGHT TENTACLES

  BYE-BYE, BALLET

  VERY FISHY

  OCEAN LIFE GONE BAD

  IN HOT WATER

  SQUIDARINAS

  Copyright

  Contents

  Ivy + Bean Book 4: Take Care of the Babysitter

  TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

  DISASTER TWINS

  THE SPECIAL EXPERIMENT

  WHO’S IN CHARGE?

  THE UNDERSHIRT OF FREEDOM

  WHERE ARE YOU, MISS PEPPY-PANTS?

  THE DOOR IN THE CEILING

  UH-OH

  A WORLD OF TROUBLE

  ONE IS SILVER AND THE OTHER’S GOLD

  JUST DESSERTS

  TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

  Thwack!

  Bean was grinding corn. She put a few pieces of Indian corn on the sidewalk and then smacked a rock down on top of them. Thwack! It hardly dented them, but that was okay. That was part of the fun. You had to pound for a long time. Thwack!

  “What are you doing?” It was her sister, Nancy, standing on the porch.

  “Grinding corn.” Thwack! Bean looked at her corn. It was dented now. “You can do some, too, if you want. I’ve got lots of corn.”

  Nancy watched her pound. “What’s it for?”

  “Food,” said Bean. “I’m making cornbread.” Thwack! “Hey, look! Corn dust!”

  Nancy almost came to look. She even took a step down the stairs. But then she got a prissy look on her face and said, “Like Mom’s going to let you eat stuff that’s been on the sidewalk. Dream on.”

  Bean could have thrown the rock at her, but she knew better than that. Bean was seven. Nancy was eleven. Bean knew how to drive Nancy nutso without getting into trouble herself. She began to moan loudly, “Grind or starve! Winter’s coming! If we don’t grind corn, we’ll have to eat rocks!”

  “Cut it out, Bean!” hissed Nancy. “Everyone will see you!”

  Nancy was always worried that everyone would see her. Bean wanted everyone to see her. She lay down on the sidewalk and rolled from side to side, moaning, “Just a little corn dust, that’s all I ask!”

  The front door slammed. Nancy had gone inside. That was easy.

  Bean lay on the sidewalk, resting. The sun was warm. She loved Saturdays.

  “We’ve got dirt at my house,” said a voice above her.

  It was Sophie W. from down the street.

  “What kind of dirt?” asked Bean.

  Sophie smiled. Both her front teeth were out, and she had filled the hole with gum. “A lot of dirt.”

  That sounded interesting. Bean jumped up and grabbed her bag of corn. Together, she and Sophie hurried around Pancake Court.

  Usually Sophie W.’s house looked a lot like all the other houses on Pancake Court, but today it looked different. Today, there was an enormous mound of dirt in the front yard. A monster mound. It was as high as the front porch. Maybe even higher. It spread across most of the lawn, all the way to the path. The dirt was dark brown, the kind of dirt that smells good and is already halfway to mud.

  “Wow. Your parents actually gave you dirt?” asked Bean.

  “Sort of,” Sophie said. “They’re going to use it in the backyard, but not until next week.”

  “We can play on it?” asked Bean. It was too good to be true. “It’s okay with your mom?”

  Sophie W. looked at her front door and giggled. “My mom’s not home! There’s a babysitter in there!”

  Bean stared at the mound. They wouldn’t put it out in the front yard if they didn’t want people to use it, she thought. “Shouldn’t we ask the babysitter?” she said.

  Just at that moment, a teenage girl stuck her head out the front door. She was the babysitter. “Oh,” she said to Sophie. “There you are.”

  “Is it okay if we play with this dirt?” asked Bean politely.

  The teenager looked at the mound like she had never seen it before. “I guess. Um. Don’t track it into the house.”

  “No problem,” said Bean. “We don’t even want to go in the house.”

  The babysitter nodded and turned to Sophie. “I guess I’ll be watching TV, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Sophie. She and Bean waited until the teenager was inside. Then Sophie turned to Bean. “What should we play?”

  “Play?” said Bean. “We haven’t got time to play! This volcano’s about to blow!”

  DISASTER TWINS

  Ivy wouldn’t want to miss out on a volcano, that was for sure. Bean zipped up the street to Ivy’s house and rang the doorbell. But that was too slow. “Hey!” she yelled through the mail slot. “There’s a volcano at Sophie W.’s!”

  “A what?” said Ivy, opening the door. Ivy was reading. She was reading a really big book with long words even on the cover, which was something Bean couldn’t stand. It was bad enough when there were big words inside the book.

  “A volcano!” Bean yelled. “Come on!”

  Ivy looked at her book.

  Bean rolled her eyes. “Ivy! It’s a natural disaster! You have to be there!”

  “Okay,” said Ivy. She put down her book. “It’s a good book, though.”

  “You are so weird sometimes,” said Bean. “Come on!”

  The two girls ran back to Sophie’s house. Leo was there now, and Sophie S. and Prairie and Prairie’s little brother, Isaiah.

  When she got to the front yard, Bean fell onto the grass. “Earthquake!
” she hollered. Volcanoes made the earth shake, too. Volcanoes and earthquakes were like disaster twins.

  Ivy grabbed a bush and shook it back and forth to show that the earth was quaking. Sophie W. and Prairie pretended they were being crushed by falling buildings. Leo pretended his car blew up, which was a little strange, but he said it happened all the time during earthquakes.

  “Smoke!” screeched Bean, pretending to be terrified. She pointed to the dirt mountain. “She’s going to blow!”

  They all stopped what they were doing and looked at the mound of dirt.

  “It would be better if we had real smoke,” said Sophie S.

  “It would be better if we had real lava,” said Bean.

  Ivy glanced around the yard, looking for lava. There wasn’t any, but she did see a hose lying on the lawn. Hmmm. She picked it up.

  “That’s good,” said Bean. “Lava flows, just like water.”

  “Yup,” said Ivy. “But how are we going to get it to come out the top of the dirt?”

  They all thought about that for a minute.

  “I know,” said Prairie, her eyes shining. “Let’s stick him inside.” She pointed to Isaiah. “We dig a hole at the top, and then we bury him with the hose.”

  Isaiah looked worried.

  “If we bury him,” said Bean, “he won’t be able to breathe.”

  Isaiah nodded.

  “We’ll just dig a hole,” said Leo. “We won’t bury him.”

  “It’ll be like a sacrifice to the gods,” said Ivy in a dreamy voice.

  “I’m going home,” said Isaiah. He ran.

  Prairie caught him. She promised to give him her stuffed seal plus three glow-in-the-dark stickers. Also a lollipop the next time she got two. That was a lot, just for being the lava. Isaiah said okay.

  It took quite a while to build the volcano. At first, they tried climbing to the top of the mound to dig the crater. A lot of dirt slid off the mound, and so did Ivy and Sophie S.

  In the end, they decided to smash down the dirt in the back of the mound to make steps and then dig an Isaiah-sized crater near the top. It would only look like a volcano from the front, but who cared?

  Finally, everything was perfect. Isaiah climbed the steps slowly, holding the hose and Bean’s bag of corn. Bean, Ivy, Leo, Prairie, and Sophie S. gathered around the foot of the volcano. Sophie W. got to turn on the hose, since it was her house.

  “You ready?” called Prairie.

  “Yes,” said Isaiah. They could hardly hear him inside the crater.

  “On your mark!” yelled Bean. “Get set! Go!” She threw herself onto the ground. “Earthquake!” she bellowed.

  “Help!” howled Sophie S. “The volcano is spewing!”

  Isaiah threw the corn out the top.

  “Ask the gods for forgiveness!” yelled Ivy.

  “It’s too late!” shouted Leo, flapping bushes back and forth.

  “Ohhh nooooo! Here it comes!” hollered Prairie.

  Sophie W. laughed and turned the hose on full blast.

  “AAAHH!” screamed the volcano, and water blew out the top of the crater in a gigantic spray.

  Bean was sopping wet. There was corn in her hair. There was mud on her clothes. She was crawling through the burning lava to bring life-giving corn to the hungry townspeople. The hungry townspeople were some rocks over by the edge of the lawn. Ivy and Leo and Prairie and both Sophies were crawling through the burning lava, too. Isaiah refused to come out of the crater.

  “BEEE-EEN! TIME TO COME HO-OME!” It was Bean’s mom, calling from her porch.

  Weird. Bean had already had lunch. She decided her mother didn’t really mean it.

  “BEAN! I MEAN NOW!”

  Oops. Maybe she did really mean it.

  Bean stood up. “Five more minutes?” she yelled.

  “NOW, BEAN!” Bean’s mother sounded cranky.

  “I’ve got to go,” Bean said to the other kids.

  “Okay,” said Ivy. “See you.”

  “Bye,” said Sophie W., pulling a corn kernel out of the mud. “Look! Food!”

  Bean looked at them. “You know,” she said, “that’s my corn. And it was my idea. You guys should stop till I come back.”

  Leo sat back on his heels. “No way.”

  “It’s my dirt,” Sophie W. pointed out.

  Bean looked at Ivy. Ivy shrugged. “I want to keep on playing,” she said.

  Bean scowled. It wasn’t fair. “You wouldn’t even know about it if it wasn’t for me.” Some friend she was.

  “BEEE-EEN!”

  Bean stomped home.

  THE SPECIAL EXPERIMENT

  “What do you want?” Bean said to her mother.

  “Excuse me?” said her mother. That meant that Bean had been rude and she’d better shape up quick.

  “Sorry. What?”

  “Well!” Her mother smiled brightly. “Today we’re going to try a special experiment, and I want you to be on your best behavior.”

  Best behavior? It was Saturday! Bean looked carefully at her mother. She was wearing lipstick. “Where are you going?” Bean asked.

  “Daddy and I are going to a play—”

  “Can I come?” Bean always asked that, even if she didn’t really want to go.

  “No. It’s for grown-ups,” said her mom.

  “Is Leona babysitting?” Bean liked Leona. She had long black hair, and she could draw perfect horses.

  “No.” Bean’s mom sighed. “Leona has poison oak. That’s the reason for the special experiment.”

  Bean wasn’t liking the sound of this. Grownups used the word special when they really meant weird.

  “Did you know that I was eleven years old when I started babysitting?” her mom asked.

  “No.” Uh-oh. Was she about to get a new babysitter?

  “Well, I was,” her mother went on. “And now that Nancy’s eleven, we’ve decided to let her take care of you for the afternoon.”

  “What?!” yelped Bean. Nancy was her new babysitter?

  “And you’ll behave just like you’d behave for any other babysitter,” said her father, popping into the room. His hair was wet.

  “Which means nicely,” said her mother. “Calmly.”

  “You’re going to let Nancy babysit me?” yelled Bean. “She’ll kill me!”

  “She won’t kill you.”

  “She’ll tie me up and stuff me in the attic!” hollered Bean.

  “She’s not going to tie you up and stuff you in the attic,” said her father.

  “We don’t have an attic,” said her mother. “We have a crawl space.”

  “She won’t give me anything to eat! I’ll starve!” Bean couldn’t stop yelling.

  “We’re only going to be gone a few hours. We’ll be home for dinner. You won’t starve,” said her father.

  Bean looked from her mom to her dad. They looked back at her. They had already decided, and they weren’t going to change their minds. They were really going to leave her with Nancy. Bean had no choice. “Can I go back to Sophie’s, at least?” she asked.

  “No,” said her mom. “That’s the other thing, honey. We want you to stay at home this afternoon. Inside the house, where Nancy can keep an eye on you. Just to be on the safe side.”

  This was getting worse and worse. Bean pressed her hands against her cheeks and rolled her eyes back in her head. She opened her mouth as wide as it would go.

  “Bean! Stop that!” said her mother.

  Bean stopped it. “Mom,” she said, trying to sound calm and nice. “Do you realize that we built a volcano in Sophie W.’s yard? Do you realize that everybody in the whole entire world is down there except me? And it’s erupting? And it was my idea?”

  “You can call Ivy and ask her to come over if you want,” said her mother.

  “No, I can’t, because she’s playing at Sophie’s,” said Bean grumpily. “Along with everybody else in the whole entire world.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. It’s just for one afternoon.”
Her mother felt bad; Bean could tell.

  Her dad didn’t. “You’ll live,” he said.

  Bean collapsed onto the rug. “I’m doomed,” she moaned. “I’m double-doomed!”

  “Hey, Beanie!” said Nancy, bouncing into the living room. “Did you hear the news? We’re going to have a great time! I’ll even play crazy eights if you want.”

  Bean looked up at Nancy with narrow eyes. She was faking. The minute their parents left, Nancy was going to start being the meanest babysitter in the world.

  “Okay!” said her dad, slapping his hands together. “Great! Crazy eights! Let’s get going, Char! Can’t be late!”

  Her mom bent down and patted Bean’s cheek. “We’ll be back in no time, sweetie.”

  Bean closed her eyes. She hoped she looked like a poor little thing.

  “Take good care of your little sister, Nancy,” said her mom.

  “No worries,” Nancy sang. “Have a great time!”

  There was the sound of her mother putting on a sweater.

  There was the sound of the door closing.

  They were gone.

  Triple-doomed, thought Bean.

  Bean opened her eyes. Nancy was standing in the doorway. She had her hair up in a bouncy ponytail. She was smiling with lots of teeth, like a camp counselor. “Do you want to play cards?” she said in a peppy voice.

  “No,” said Bean. “Why are you so happy?”

  Nancy’s smile got even bigger. “Because I’m getting twenty dollars for this.”

  WHO’S IN CHARGE?

  “I’m the one who should get twenty dollars,” Bean said. It was about the fifth time she had said it. “Putting up with you. Teaching you how to be a babysitter. God!”

  “Don’t say God,” Nancy said. She was reading a magazine.

  “You’re not in charge of me!” Bean huffed.

  “Actually, I am,” Nancy said. But she didn’t say it in a mean way. Bean had been trying to make Nancy mad ever since their parents left, but she hadn’t been able to. Nancy was being mature. It was driving Bean bonkers.