Free Jasper John Dooley, Star of the Week by Caroline Adderson, Ben Clanton

Chapter 1

    Jasper John Dooley was in the basement getting ready for a busy week. The kid who was the Star of the Week was always busy and, starting tomorrow, Jasper was the Star. Jasper, the Star! Tomorrow! He’d looked forward to tomorrow for a very, very, very long time.
    Mom came down with a load of rumpled clothes in her arms. “Yay!” Jasper said. “Laundry!”
    â€œAah!” she said. “Jasper John, you scared me! What are you doing down here? Why aren’t you playing outside?”

    â€œI’m the Star of the Week,” he said.
    â€œYou’re the Star of the Week tomorrow,” Mom said, opening the lid of the washing machine. “Today you’re a boy who needs to breathe fresh air.”
    The door of the washing machine looked like a big square mouth. Mom began stuffing the clothes down into it, feeding it dirty socks and T-shirts and soggy towels. “Did you see the schedule?” Jasper asked her.
    â€œIt’s in the kitchen.”
    â€œOn Monday, the Star gets to do Show and Tell,” Jasper said. “Only the Star gets to do Show and Tell. I’ll Show and I’ll Tell. Everybody else will Look and Listen.”
    â€œStill,” Mom said, “it’s such a beautiful day. Here you are hiding in the basement.”
    â€œI’m not hiding. I’m collecting the lint off the dryer screen.”
    Jasper had already pulled the screen out of its slot and scraped off the lint. Now the lint sat on top of the dryer, a flowery-smelling, gray, linty blob. “It’s my Show and Tell,” Jasper said. Then, in case Mom hadn’t read the schedule very closely, in case she had just magnetted it to the fridge with the store coupons and emergency phone numbers and the long list of Things To Do that never got crossed off, only longer, Jasper reminded her what was going to happen that week at school.
    â€œMonday, Show and Tell. Tuesday, Family Tree. Wednesday, Science Experiment. Thursday, I Share My Talent. And on Friday …”
    He stopped so he could enjoy a shiver of excitement.
    â€œOn Friday, I bring a Special Snack for everybody to eat while they’re writing Compliments to me.”
    â€œIt’s going to be a wonderful week, Jasper,” Mom said as she poured the detergent into the hungry mouth of the washing machine. Jasper watched her. “Detergent is ketchup to a washing machine,” he said, but she wasn’t listening. She said, “You have your lint, Jasper. Now go outside.”
    â€œWhen’s the laundry going to be finished?” he asked.
    â€œIn a few hours. Why?”
    â€œI need more lint.”
    â€œOh, Jasper,” Mom said, and she pointed to the basement door.
    Jasper went upstairs to get his lint box from his room. Out in the backyard, he sat with his legs in a
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in the grass and carefully opened the box. He stuck his nose in it and sniffed that special flowery lint smell, the fabric softener clean-clothes-start-of-a-new-day smell that he loved.
    His Nan had given him the box. It was red with a gold latch and compartments inside for bracelets and earrings and rings. But Jasper wasn’t using it for jewelry. He was filling each of the compartments with lint. He packed the new blob in one of the gray-lint compartments. Lint with colored flecks went in a different compartment. There was also a compartment for pocket lint and a very, very special compartment that had only a tiny bit of lint in it because that kind of lint was rare and hard to collect. It was belly-button lint, and the only place Jasper could get belly-button lint was in his dad’s belly button.
    After he had sorted his lint, he took the box inside and told his mom he was going across the alley and one house down to see what his friend Ori was doing. “Good,” she said. “Play outside.”
    A sound like the wa-wa-wa of a car alarm floated across Ori’s yard. Ori lived with his mother and father,