Free Being the Adventures of a Knowledgeable Stingray, a Toughy Little Buffalo, and Someone Called Plastic by Emily Jenkins Page B

the ways of plants.
    “When you’ve been to school like I have,” says StingRay, interrupting one evening as Plastic is looking curiously at the shelves, “—when you’ve gone to show-and-tell and seen the classroom and all the important things they have in there, then you know that books are a place to find out truths.”
    “Truths about what?” asks Plastic.
    “Just truths,” says StingRay, positioning herself proudly in front of the books. “Like what is two and two?”
    “Four,” pipes up Lumphy, who is watching the sun set from the windowsill nearby.
    “If we want the answer,” explains StingRay, as if she hasn’t heard him, “we can look it up. Truths like these are in books. That’s what you learn at school, if you’ve been to school like I have.”
    “We were
all
at school,” mutters Lumphy, still on the windowsill.
    Plastic wants to know which book would have that truth inside, about two and two.
    “A book on money,” says StingRay. “It tells you how to be rich and famous
    and how to fill up your really big swimming
pool with liquid gold,
and how to eat expensive chocolates for
breakfast,
and have banquets for hundreds of your best
friends,
and swing from chandeliers made from
diamonds.
    Also, how to count numbers together, if that is the kind of truth you are after.”
    “How is that a truth?” calls Lumphy.
    “Okay, a fact, then. Facts are in books. If you’ve been to school.”
    “Ahem,” coughs Lumphy. “I was right there next to you. Don’t you remember?”
    “Where?”
    “At school.”
    “Time for bed,” StingRay says importantly.
    The Little Girl comes into the bedroom and lifts her up to sleep on the high bed with the fluffy pillows, while Lumphy and Plastic stay where they are.
    … …
    “Let’s find the book on money,” suggests Plastic, when the lights are out and both StingRay and the Girl are asleep.
    Lumphy makes a grouchy noise. Now that it’s night and the Girl can’t see him moving around, he wants to go down the hall to visit TukTuk, the yellow towel who lives in the bathroom. TukTuk always has something interesting to say. She sees a lot of strange behavior in her lifeas a towel, although she doesn’t get out much. Lumphy particularly likes to hear about tooth brushing and fingernail clipping, things he is not sure he properly understands. “I’m busy,” he tells Plastic.
    So Plastic tries to get the one-eared sheep to look for the money book.
    “Is there anything about grass in it?” Sheep wants to know.
    “I don’t think so. It’s the truths and facts of liquid gold swimming pools.”
    “Anything about clover?”
    “Probably not,” Plastic is forced to admit.
    “If it’s not going to be interesting, I’d just as soon skip it,” Sheep says kindly. She goes to play marbles with the toy mice.
    Plastic looks at the books by herself, reading the titles on the spines. One explains the meanings of words. One isfull of maps. Another is about the wonderful world of plants. But there isn’t any book on money or gold swimming pools—and even if there was one, Plastic couldn’t pull it out from the shelf.
    Only one book lies open on the floor so that she can read it: a book about animals, with pictures and details about how they live, what they eat, and where they sleep at night.
    Plastic finds the part about stingrays. They live in the ocean and flap their flipper-wings like birds in the sky. She reads about sheep and how their woolly coats get shorn. She reads about mice, who are part of the rodent family. And she reads a good deal about buffaloes and how they run around in herds.
    “Ooh,” she realizes. “I can read about plastics!”
    But plastics aren’t there.
    She looks again.
    They still aren’t there.
    Then Plastic goes page by page through the animal book, looking at every picture of every single animal.
    None of them looks like her.
    Ladybugs are round and red, but Plastic doesn’t have wings like a ladybug.
    Turtles are round when