Free Best Friend Emma by Sally Warner

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    Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
    First published in the United States of America by Viking,
    a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007
    Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008
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    Text copyright © Sally Warner, 2007
    Illustrations copyright © Jamie Harper, 2007
    All rights reserved
    THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS :
    Warner, Sally.
    Best friend Emma / by Sally Warner; illustrated by Jamie Harper.
    p. cm.
    Summary: When a new girl joins her third-grade class just before Thanksgiving,
    Emma thinks only about gaining her friendship before the popular Cynthia
    can, and hurts her best friend Annie Pat’s feelings in the process.
    EISBN: 9781101567449
    [1. Best friends—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction.
    4. Thanksgiving Day—Fiction.] I. Harper, Jamie, ill. II. Title
    PZ7.W24644Bes 2007     [E]—dc22     2006027629
    Manufactured in China
    Set in Bitstream Carmina
    Book design by Nancy Brennan
    Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
    The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

For little Lucy Parsons, who will meet
    her first best friend any day now! — S. W.

    For my pal, Al—J.H.

      1      
That Empty Feeling
    “I’m stuffed!” I say, almost gasping.
    It is a Monday in November, and Annie Pat Masterson and I are eating lunch at school. We are outside, my favorite place in the world to be.
    Annie Pat and I are getting ready for Thanksgiving—ten days away, Mom says—by stretching our stomachs. You have to do this from the inside, with food, because outside stretching doesn’t work. We already tried that.
    “I know you’re stuffed. But want another apple anyway?” Annie Pat asks—gloomily, because she is stuffed, too. She holds one out on the flat of her hand, as if I were a horse. Herred pigtails are usually bouncy, but today they droop.

    “Sure,” I lie. “We’re in training for Thanksgiving, aren’t we?”
    Annie Pat nods.
    “Last year, I was too full after dinner to eat any pumpkin pie,” I continue. “And there wasn’t any left over the next day, either. So I missed my pumpkin-pie chance for the whole entire year.”
    “I ate a piece of pie,” Annie Pat tells me, remembering.“But I could barely even taste it, my mouth was so worn out from eating turkey.”
    “It’s all that
chewing
with turkey” I say, agreeing with her. “You’d have to be a termite to be able to chew that much.”
    Annie Pat sighs.
    “This is going to be the coolest Thanksgiving ever,” I say, trying to cheer her up.