Annie Barrows Read online

  IVY + BEAN

  BOOK 3

  ALSO AVAILABLE:

  IVY + BEAN BOOK 1

  “The deliciousness is in the details here, with both girls drawn distinctly and with flair.”

  —Booklist, starred review

  “… illustrations deftly capture the girls’ personalities and the tale’s humor… . Barrows’s narrative brims with sprightly dialogue.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Readers are bound to embrace this spunky twosome and eagerly anticipate their continuing tales of mischief and mayhem.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  IVY + BEAN AND THE GHOST THAT HAD TO GO BOOK 2

  “This strong follow-up… is sure to please.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “… the series’ strong suits are humor and the spot-on take on relationships.”

  —Booklist

  “This story defies expectations of what an early chapter book can be.”

  —School Library Journal

  IVY + BEAN

  BREAK THE FOSSIL RECORD

  BOOK 3

  written by annie barrows + illustrated by sophie blackall

  For Clio and Esme, who laugh at all the right parts —A. B.

  For Georgia and Silas, finders of impressive bones —S. B.

  Text © 2007 by Annie Barrows.

  Illustrations © 2007 by Sophie Blackall.

  All rights reserved.

  Ping-Pong is a registered trademark of Parker Brothers, Inc.

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

  The illustrations in this book were rendered in Chinese ink.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Barrows, Annie.

  Ivy and Bean break the fossil record / written by Annie Barrows ;

  illustrated by Sophie Blackall.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Everyone in second grade seems set on breaking a world record

  and friends Ivy and Bean are no exception, deciding to become the youngest

  people ever to discover a dinosaur skeleton.

  eISBN: 978-0-8118-7653-7

  [1. World records—Fiction. 2. Fossils—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction.]

  I. Blackall, Sophie, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.B27576Jkf 2007

  [Fic]—dc22

  2007001471

  Chronicle Books LLC

  680 Second Street, San Francisco, California 94107

  www.chroniclekids.com

  CONTENTS

  DROP EVERYTHING!

  CARPET VIPERS, HULA HOOPS, AND TWO MILLION TEETH

  ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, YIKES!

  WHAT A SCREAM

  WATCH YOUR TAIL, MARY ANNING

  IVYBEANOSAUR

  BELIEVE IT OR NOT

  A BONE TO PICK

  DORKOSAURUS

  THE BONES OF MYSTERY

  ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER RECORD

  DROP EVERYTHING!

  Boring.

  Boring!

  Boring!

  Bean turned her book upside down and tried to read it that way. Cool. Well, sort of cool. No. Boring.

  Bean sighed and turned her book back right side up. It was a book about cats that she had picked from the school library. There was a different cat on each page. Bean liked cats, but reading about them was driving her crazy. All the cats looked the same except the sphynx cat, who didn’t have any fur. He looked halfway between a dog and a rat. Bean liked him the best.

  I bet Ivy’s never seen a sphynx cat, thought Bean. She knew she wasn’t supposed to talk during Drop Everything and Read, so she poked Ivy in the ribs.

  Ivy’s eyes were binging across the pages of her book. Bing, bing, bing. She looked like she was watching a Ping-Pong game. She didn’t even notice Bean.

  So Bean poked her again. “Hey!” she whispered. “Earth to Ivy!”

  “Hmm?” Ivy mumbled.

  “Looky here! It’s a dog-rat!” Bean whispered louder.

  Ivy looked for a little tiny second.

  “Oh,” she said and went back to reading.

  Bean sighed again. All the other kids in Ms. Aruba-Tate’s second-grade classroom were bent over their books. Even Eric, who usually fell out of his chair two or three times during Drop Everything and Read, was quiet. He had a book about man-eating sharks.

  MacAdam was picking his nose. Bean raised her hand. Ms. Aruba-Tate didn’t see because she was reading, too, so Bean called out, “Ms. Aruba-Tate!”

  “Shhh,” whispered Ms. Aruba-Tate. “What is it, Bean?”

  “There’s a problem, and it starts with M,” began Bean, looking hard at MacAdam. “And then N and P.” She wiggled her finger next to her nose, just in case Ms. Aruba-Tate needed an extra hint.

  Ms. Aruba-Tate looked at MacAdam, too. Then she put down her book and came over to Bean’s table.

  “I brought this from home especially for you, Bean,” she said, holding out a big, shiny book. “See,” she pointed at the cover. “It’s The Amazing Book of World Records. I think you’ll like it.”

  Bean wasn’t sure. “What’s a world record?”

  “When someone does something better or longer or weirder than anyone else in the whole world, that means they’ve set a world record.”

  “Weirder?” Bean asked. That sounded interesting.

  Ms. Aruba-Tate smiled. “There’s a man in here who walked on his hands for eight hundred and seventy miles.”

  “You mean on his hands and knees? Like a baby?”

  “No. Just on his hands. With his feet in the air,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate.

  “No way.”

  “Read the book. You’ll see.” Ms. Aruba-Tate returned to her chair.

  Bean opened the shiny cover. On the very first page, there was a picture of a woman whose black hair trailed behind her like a fancy cape. Bean read that the hair was 19 feet long and that the woman had been growing it since she was 12. Wow, thought Bean. Doesn’t it get dirt and bugs in it? Bean turned the page. Eeeew. A man was eating a scorpion. Double-eeeew! He ate 30 scorpions a day! On the next page was a picture of a boy with 256 straws in his mouth! What did his mouth look like when there were no straws in it? Big and slobbery, Bean guessed.

  “Ivy!” she whispered. “Ivy!”

  Ivy’s eyes stopped binging back and forth. “What?”

  “Check this out!”

  CARPET VIPERS, HULA HOOPS, AND TWO MILLION TEETH

  “He stuck one hundred and fifty-nine clothespins on his face!” shouted Eric. “Look at him!”

  It was recess, but instead of soccer or jump rope or monkey bars, the second-graders were huddled under the play structure. At the center of the circle were Bean and her book. Kids pulled the book back and forth, all trying to look at the pages at the same time.

  “Look at her! Ninety-nine hula hoops at once!” Vanessa squeaked. “Around her neck, too!”

  “Look at this turnip! It weighs thirty-nine pounds!” said Dusit.

  “Gross! I hate turnips,” Eric said. “My mom made me eat one once, and I spit it into the heater.”

  “I hate lima beans,” said Dusit.

  Bean pulled the book back in her direction. After all, Ms. Aruba-Tate had brought it especially for her. “This guy has had more broken bones than any living human,” read Bean. In the picture, he was smiling happily. “He’s broken his leg fourteen times.”

  “On purpose?” asked Emma.

  “I guess so,” said Bean. “He jumps off of buildings.”

  Drew slid the book his way. “Hey! This guy collects teeth! He has two million teeth!”

  “This is the world’s most poisonous snake,” read Leo, pointing to another picture. “It’s called the carpet viper.”

  “Does it live in carpets?” a
sked Zuzu. She looked worried.

  “In India and Africa,” said Leo. “Not here.”

  Bean slid the book back her way. “Look, Zuzu! This girl did a hundred and nine cartwheels in a row.”

  “Let me see that!” Zuzu grabbed the book and looked closely at the picture of a teenage girl in tights. “I bet I could do a hundred and ten.”

  “Bet you couldn’t,” said Eric. He grabbed the book from Zuzu and flipped through the pages. “This dude, he ate four hundred M&M’s in one minute, it says. That’s nothing. I bet I could eat a thousand in one minute if I didn’t chew.”

  “You’d choke,” warned Leo.

  “No. I’ve had lots of practice,” said Eric.

  “Look,” said Bean, reaching over Eric’s shoulder and flipping pages. “Look at this kid. He’s only a kid, and he made a world record for hanging spoons on his face. Fifteen. No glue, either.”

  “How do they stick?” asked Ivy, looking up from her book.

  “I can’t tell,” Bean said. “Sweat, maybe.”

  “Why would anyone hang spoons on their face?”

  “I don’t know, but he made a world record.” Bean looked at the picture. The kid was covered with spoons, but he still looked proud and happy because he had set a world record.

  “I’m going to do sixteen spoons,” said Emma, staring at the picture.

  “Hey! I was going to do sixteen!” said Bean. She wanted to set a record and have her picture in The Amazing Book of World Records. Spoons seemed pretty easy. And, unlike some of the records, spoons didn’t hurt. But now Emma had dibs. Dang.

  “I’m going to eat five hundred M&M’s in a minute,” Eric said.

  “Where are you going to get five hundred M&M’s?” asked Dusit.

  Eric thought for a moment. “My uncle gave me ten dollars for my birthday. My dad said I could spend it on anything I want.”

  “I’m going to do a hundred and eleven cartwheels,” said Zuzu, tucking her pink shirt into her pink pants and reclipping her hair.

  “I’m going to see if Ms. Aruba-Tate has any spoons,” said Emma.

  Emma and Zuzu walked off, looking important.

  Bean felt left out. What could she do? She flipped through the pages until she came to a picture of a woman holding a broken glass. What? Was there a record for breaking the most glasses? No—the woman had broken it by singing in a really high voice. “Ahhhhh,” sang Bean, but softly.

  Ivy was still reading.

  “What’s that book about, anyway?” asked Bean.

  When Ivy looked up, her eyes were shining. “This girl. Mary Anning was her name. She found the first whole ichthyosaur fossil in the world. She was only twelve when she did it, too. She lived near the beach and, one day, she saw a skeleton face in the cliffs. So she dug it out—it took her a long time, and everybody made fun of her, but she didn’t care—and it was an ichthyosaur! Only nobody knew about dinosaurs then. She also found a plesiosaur and a pterodactyl. See? This is her.” Ivy showed Bean a picture of a girl in a tall hat. She wasn’t very pretty, but she was famous and important.

  Bean sighed. She was unfamous and unimportant. There had to be some way she could fix that.

  ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, YIKES!

  The first 40 straws were easy-peasy. Bean stuck them all in her mouth at once. Then she opened another box of straws. “Uhhhr,” she said to Ivy, pointing.

  “More? Are you sure?” asked Ivy.

  Bean nodded. “Ooo-uwer hihy-eh-uh,” she grunted, which meant two hundred fifty-seven.

  Ivy pulled a straw out of the box and shoved it into Bean’s mouth, but she accidentally shoved too hard, and the straw scraped the back of Bean’s throat. “Hhha-aaak,“ choked Bean, and the straws sprayed across the kitchen floor.

  Ivy winced. “Sorry.”

  “Ow.” Bean’s eyes were watering. She looked at the straws all over the kitchen and thought about Mary Anning. She wasn’t a quitter, and neither was Bean. She began to pick up the straws. Ivy helped.

  Once again, she shoved 40 straws in her mouth, and, very carefully, Ivy pushed in one more. Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three. The girls were working so hard that they didn’t hear Bean’s dad come into the kitchen. Forty-four.

  “Hi, Ivy. Hi—Bean, what have you got in your mouth?” Bean’s dad said, staring.

  “Awww,” said Bean.

  “Straws,” said Ivy helpfully. “She’s breaking a world record.”

  “Excellent,” Bean’s dad said, leaning over to see better. “How many does she need to get in there?”

  “Two hundred and fifty-seven,” said Ivy. She looked at Bean.

  Bean nodded.

  “How many does she have in now?”

  “Forty-four.”

  Her father didn’t say anything, but Bean knew what he was thinking. It was no good. She was never going to get 257 straws in her mouth. Sadly, she pulled the straws out. “I’ll never break a world’s record.” She handed the spitty straws to her father.

  “Thanks a lot,” said Dad. “Maybe there’s a different record you could break.”

  “Like what?” asked Bean. “I can’t walk on my hands.”

  Bean’s dad glanced at the sink. He hadn’t washed the breakfast dishes yet. “Why don’t you set the record for fast dish washing?” he said, smiling. “That would be a good one.”

  Bean ran to get the book. There were no records for fastest dishwasher. “This is going to be a piece of cake,” said Bean, looking at the counter piled with plates.

  “You could do it slowly and still break the record,” said Ivy.

  “It’ll be better to do it fast,” said Bean. “Super-fast. Then no one will ever break my record.”

  Her father began to look a little worried. “Maybe this isn’t a very good idea.”

  “Dad, every day, you and Mom tell me I have to wash the dishes,” said Bean, “and now, when I finally want to, you say it’s not a good idea.” She shook her head. Grown-ups were so weird.

  “Well,” said her dad, “okay. But be careful.”

  What was he talking about? She was always careful. Bean began running nice warm water in the sink. She squirted out a big jet of soap, and mountains of bubbles grew. “Keep your eyes peeled,” she said to Ivy. “You’ll probably only see a blur.”

  Bean’s father ran his hands through his hair. “Couldn’t you grow the longest finger-nails instead?” he asked.

  “Takes too long. You’re the official timekeeper, Ivy,” said Bean as the water gushed. “And Dad, you have to take a picture of me when I’m done. With all the shiny clean plates.”

  “Sure,” said her dad.

  “I’m going to do all these plates in five minutes,” said Bean. “Got that? Five minutes.”

  “Okay,” said Ivy, looking at the clock. “On your mark. Get set. Go!”

  Bean grabbed a plate and plunged it into the water. Wipe, wipe, wipe. She rinsed it in the next-door sink. Rinse, rinse, rinse. She put it in the dish rack. Okay. Next plate.

  Wipe, wipe, wipe.

  Rinse, rinse, rinse.

  Dish rack.

  “How am I doing?”

  “One minute gone,” said Ivy.

  Wow. Bean looked at the pile of plates. She would have to hurry. Quickly, she put two plates in the soap and wiped them. Quickly, she rinsed them. Rack! Again!

  Wipe! Rinse! Rack! Again!

  Wipe! Rinse! Rack! Again!

  Wipe! Rinse! Rack! Again!

  “How many more minutes?” yelled Bean as she scrubbed.

  “You’ve got half a minute left,” said Ivy.

  “Oh no!” Frantically, Bean took two more plates and plunged them in the soap. Zip, she wiped them. Zip, she put them in the clean water. Dish rack!

  “Only ten more seconds!” called Ivy. There was one more plate left! Bean whizzed it into the soap and shook it. Hurry! She whizzed it into the clean water. Hurry!

  “One more second!”

  Bean panicked. “YAH!” she screeched, hurling the plate at
the dish rack. It flew over the rack and crashed to the floor, shattering into a million pieces.

  There was a stunned silence. Ivy, Bean, and Bean’s dad stared at the little bits of plate sprinkled over the floor.

  Finally, Bean spoke. “Did I do it in five minutes?”

  Ivy shook her head. No.

  Dang.

  WHAT A SCREAM

  When Bean’s older sister, Nancy, wanted her room painted yellow, Bean’s mother said that Bean could pick out a new color for her room, too. Bean picked green. Not light, sweet green. Deep, rich green the color of emeralds. Everyone told her she would get tired of it, but she hadn’t. Bean loved her room. It was small and cozy: her bed was in one corner, her toy box in another, her dresser in a third, and, best of all, her basket chair was in the fourth. She liked to sit in her chair and pretend that she was an ape-girl living in a jungle tree house. She had made a lot of pictures of jungle animals and stuck them on the wall. The best was the toucan.

  “We could draw,” said Ivy, looking at the pictures. “We could draw dinosaurs.”

  “I don’t want to draw. I want to break a world record,” said Bean. “Don’t you?”

  Ivy shrugged. “Not really. Seems like a lot of work for nothing. I don’t want spoons all over my face.”

  “But then you’d be famous,” said Bean.

  “But I don’t care if I’m famous for spoons on my face. If I’m going to be famous, I want to be famous for something important, like Mary Anning.”

  Bean shook her head. Spoons would be fine with her. But spoons were taken. Bean stared at her green wall and tried to get an idea. Ivy lay down on Bean’s bed and tried to imagine finding an ichthyosaur. Quiet minutes went by.

  “Hey!” said Bean.

  Ivy looked at her.

  “I’ve got a great idea!” said Bean. This was going to be easy. “I’m good at screaming, and I’m good at breaking things, right?”