Free Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little by Peggy Gifford

chapter 1
In Which
Moxy Maxwell
Begins to Read
STUART LITTLE
    Her name was Moxy Maxwell and she was nine and it was August and late August at that. It was so late in August that tonight was to be the “Goodbye to Summer Splash!” show at the pool. Moxy was one of eight petals in the water-ballet part. She and the other seven petals were going to form a human daisy at the deep end while carrying sparklers in their left hands.
    Next year Moxy planned to do a rose solo. Moxy Maxwell was just that sort of girl—the sort of girl who even at nine had big plans. In fact, last April when MissCordial asked the class to write a list of Possible Career Paths, Moxy had needed a third piece of paper. Moxy was going places, all right.
    She was going to her room. And she was going to stay there until she read every word of
Stuart Little
. Mr. Flamingo, who was going to be Moxy’s fourth-grade teacher this fall, had assigned the book for summer reading. They were going to have a quiz on it too—on the very first day of school. And tomorrow was the very first day of school.
    Now, Moxy loved to read books. She loved books so much that sometimes she would stay up all night and read. It’s just that Moxy liked to read what she wanted to read and not what someone told her to read.
    And it wasn’t as if Moxy hadn’t tried to read
Stuart Little
. She had not been exaggerating (very much at all) when she had explained to her mother earlier today that thereason she hadn’t finished reading
Stuart Little
had nothing to do with the fact that she had spent too little time with the book.
    “We’ve been practically like best friends all summer,” she said. “Inseparable.”
    It was true. Moxy had taken Stuart Little with her everywhere. If
Stuart Little
wasn’t in her backpack, Stuart Little was in her lap. When Moxy was in the car on her way to rehearse her daisy routine, Stuart Little was beside her or somewhere behind her or nestled under the windshield swelling up with sun.
    It was also true that Moxy’s mother had found Stuart Little on the porch under the broken leg of the wicker coffee table more than once. But that was a discussion for another day.
    “In fact, last Monday
Stuart Little
fell in the pool,” said Moxy. “That’s how close we are.”

    This is a photograph taken by Moxy’s twin brother, Mark. You can see that Stuart Little spent a considerable amount of the summer soaking up sun and water
.

chapter 2
In Which We Are Very
Briefly Introduced to
Moxy’s Twin Brother,
Mark Maxwell
    Except for the fact that they were twins, Mark and Moxy were different in so many ways I could spend all day listing them. For example, Moxy had not yet read
Stuart Little
, while Mark had read
Stuart Little
on the first day of summer vacation. Moxy was always talking about something she planned to do. Mark was always teasing her about something she’d
done
. Moxy had spent her summer at the pool (except Sundays) practicing her part as a petal for the water-ballet show. Mark had spent hissummer teaching himself photography. He wasn’t very good yet. But he was very much like Moxy in one way—he never gave up once he decided to do something.

chapter 3
In Which
We Get Back
to the Point
    “The point is,” Moxy said to her mother, “
Stuart Little
has been with me all summer just in case of in-between.”

chapter 4
“Just in Case of
In-Between”
Explained
    “Just in case one thing ends before the next thing begins, I can pick up
Stuart Little
and get some reading in, is what ‘just in case of in-between’ means,” said Moxy.
    Now, Moxy’s mother was not wrong when she pointed out how rare cases of “in-between” were for her older daughter. To the best of her knowledge, she had never witnessed Moxy in between anything: while Moxy was eating lunch, for example, she was already asking what was for dinner. The day she got her puppy, Mudd, shewanted to know if she could get another to keep him company. Before she