Free Miss Kraft Is Daft! by Dan Gutman

1
All about Snot
    My name is A.J. and I hate snot.
    Isn’t snot gross? Liquid gunk comes out of your nose ! How could it not be gross?
    Last week my teacher, Mr. Granite, who is from another planet, came to school sneezing, wheezing, and coughing. His nose was red. He looked terrible.
    â€œAre you sick, Mr. Granite?” asked this crybaby girl named Emily.
    â€œMy head is all stuffed up,” said Mr. Granite, and then he blew his nose into a tissue.
    Well, he didn’t really blow his nose into the tissue. If he did that, he wouldn’t have a nose anymore. He blew the snot from his nose into a tissue. Then he threw the tissue into the garbage can.
    Ewwww! I thought I was gonna throw up. That’s almost as disgusting as blowing the snot straight into the garbage can! *
    â€œExcuse me,” Mr. Granite said, “I need to go get more tissues.”
    While Mr. Granite was out of the room, the class had a very interesting discussion.
    â€œIf your head is all stuffed up,” asked Alexia, this girl who rides a skateboard all the time, “I guess that means your head is full of snot.”
    â€œNo, it’s not,” I said. “Get it? No, it’s snot?”
    Nobody laughed at my joke, so I pretended that I never made it. If you ever tell a joke and nobody laughs, just pretend that you never made the joke and keep talking. That’s the first rule of being a kid.
    â€œA head can’t be full of snot,” I explained, “because if it was full of snot, there would be no room for your brain.”
    â€œThat wouldn’t be a problem with you ,” said Andrea, this annoying girl with curly brown hair, “because you don’t have a brain!”
    â€œOh, snap!” said Ryan, who will eat anything, even stuff that isn’t food.
    â€œYour face doesn’t have a brain,” I told Andrea.
    I knew that didn’t make any sense, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
    â€œMaybe our heads are always making more snot,” said Michael, who never ties his shoes.
    â€œOr maybe our brain takes up half of our head, and the other half is made of snot,” said Neil, who we call the nude kid even though he wears clothes.
    â€œMaybe our brains turn into snot as we get older,” I suggested. “So when we get really old, our heads are completely full of snot.”
    We had to end this discussion because Mr. Granite came back into the class with a box of tissues. He was still sniffling as we pledged the allegiance and did Word of the Day.
    â€œLet’s get to work,” said Mr. Granite. “Turn to page twenty-three in your math books.”
    Ugh. I hate math. I’ll do anything to get out of math.
    Mr. Granite made a big honking noise with his nose.
    â€œMaybe you should go home, Mr. Granite,” I suggested. “You’ll feel a lot better.”
    (And we won’t have to do math!)
    â€œNice try, A.J.,” he replied. “Page twenty-three is my favorite math lesson. But every time I try to work on it with you kids, we get called to an assembly. Well, I checked, and there’s no assembly today. I’m not going to let a little cold stop me from—”
    He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence because an announcement came over the loudspeaker.
    â€œAll classes, please report to the all-purpose room for a surprise assembly.”

    â€œNot again!” shouted Mr. Granite.
    He was so mad, I thought he might jump out the window.

2
No More Mr. Nice Guy
    We had to walk a million hundred miles to the all-purpose room for the surprise assembly. I don’t know why they call it the all -purpose room, because you can’t use it for bungee jumping.
    Our principal, Mr. Klutz, was up on the stage with our vice principal, Mrs. Jafee, and our school counselor, Dr. Brad. They’re usually smiling and giving us high fives when we walk in for an assembly. But not this time. All three of them had on