Zooman Sam Read online

  Zooman Sam

  Lois Lowry

  * * *

  * * *

  Illustrated by Diane de Groat

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON

  Walter Lorraine Books

  * * *

  Walter Lorraine Books

  Text copyright © 1999 by Lois Lowry

  Illustrations copyright © 1999 by Diane de Groat

  All rights reserved. For information about permission

  to reproduce selections from this book, write to

  Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park

  Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lowry, Lois.

  Zooman Sam / by Lois Lowry: Illustrated by Diane de

  Groat

  p. cm.

  Summary: Four-year-old Sam's appearance as a

  zookeeper at his nursery school's Future Job Day leads

  him to a number of exciting activities and discoveries,

  including reading.

  ISBN 0-395-97393-7

  [1. Occupations—Fiction. 2. Zoo keepers—Fiction.

  3. Nursery schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.

  5. Literacy—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.L9673Zo 1999

  [Fic]—dc21 98-56006

  CIP

  AC

  Printed in the United States of America

  HAD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4

  * * *

  For Bailey,

  who loves Sam,

  and for Grey,

  who will

  1

  "What are you doing, Sam?" his mother called from the bottom of the stairs. "Dinner will be ready soon!"

  "Nothing," Sam called back from his bedroom. Nothing wasn't exactly true. But it was what you said when it was too hard to describe the truth. The truth would have been "I'm looking at my clothes."

  But then his mom would have said, "Why are you looking at your clothes? Is there something wrong with your clothes?" and she would have come up the stairs, and then Sam would have tried to explain why he was looking at all his clothes, and his mom would have noticed that he'd made a mess in his closet because when he stood on a chair and pushed the hangers to one side, they all fell down, and now everything was in a heap, and Sam planned to pick them all up and hang them again, he just hadn't done it yet, but his mom wouldn't understand that, and she'd probably get mad, and—

  It was easier to say "Nothing."

  "We're having chicken," his mom called, and he could hear her feet going back to the kitchen. Then he could hear the thumping of dog feet. Sam laughed a little. He knew it was Sleuth, the Krupniks' dog. Like most dogs, Sleuth understood "Come," and "Sit," though he didn't always choose to obey. But unlike most dogs, somehow Sleuth could recognize any word that related to food. And Sam's mom had said "chicken," so Sleuth, who spent most of his time sleeping (and probably dreaming of food), had leaped up to follow Mrs. Krupnik down the hall.

  Sam didn't even care about chicken. He was too absorbed in his search. He began to poke through the pile of clothes on the floor of the closet.

  He picked up a blue and white sailor suit and made a face. He remembered the wedding at which he had worn it. His sister, Anastasia, had been a bridesmaid, and she wore a beautiful dress. She looked like a princess, or like a Barbie. Sam wouldn't have minded if he could have dressed like a prince, or a Ken. He would have worn a tuxedo. Sam thought tuxedos were cool.

  But instead, his mom had made him wear that dumb sailor suit. It had short pants. His mom told him that it made him look like Popeye, and she had even drawn a marking-pen anchor tattoo on his arm, under the sleeve. But it wasn't true, about Popeye. The suit was just a dumb baby sailor suit, and everybody at the wedding said he looked cute. Sam didn't want to look cute. He wanted to look tough and mean. He decided he would never, ever wear the sailor suit again. He rolled it into a ball and threw it into the darkest corner of the closet, next to the folded-up stroller.

  Sam noticed his Osh-Kosh overalls hanging from a hook. He stood on the chair and took them down. He liked his overalls. His sister had some just like them, and sometimes he and Anastasia wore their overalls on the same day. Their dad called them Ma and Pa Kettle when they wore their overalls.

  Sam liked that. He didn't know who Ma and Pa Kettle were, but he liked the sound of those names.

  But today the overalls were not what Sam needed. He thought about climbing up to rehang them on their hook, but that was too much bother. He rolled them up and threw them into the other corner of the closet, where they settled in a heap on top of his ant farm.

  "Five minutes till dinner! Wash your hands, please!"

  Hearing his mother's voice, Sam sighed. He looked at the clothes remaining in the pile that had fallen from the rod. Halfheartedly he picked up his bright yellow raincoat and thought about it for a minute. He liked his raincoat. But today it was not what he needed. He dropped the raincoat on the floor on top of his red snowsuit.

  He looked toward the other side of the room, where he had already dumped the clothes he had taken from his bureau drawers. Socks and underpants and T-shirts and sweaters and jeans were strewn across the rug. His Superman pajamas dangled across the arm of the rocking chair, and a sweatshirt that said HARVARD UNIVERSITY had somehow landed on the head of Sam's old rocking horse.

  None of the clothes were right. Sam felt like a failure. He felt like the biggest, dumbest poop-head in the world. He began to cry. He kicked the side of his bed in frustration, and his cat, who had been sleeping in her usual place beside Sam's teddy bear, woke in surprise. She jumped from the bed with an irritated swish of her tail, gave Sam a disgusted look, and left the room.

  That was the final blow. Even his cat hated him. Sam began to cry harder.

  "Everybody! Dinner's on the table! Come right now!"

  Sam heard his father's chair creak and knew that his dad had pushed himself back from the desk in his study. He heard his dad's heavy footsteps head to the dining room.

  He heard the clumping sound of the heavy hiking boots his sister liked to wear, and knew that Anastasia was coming down the stairs from her third-floor bedroom. Then she crossed the hall outside his room, and he heard her boots again as she headed, clumpety clump, down the second flight of stairs.

  He smelled chicken.

  "Sam! Hurry up!"

  Still angry, still crying, Sam surveyed the wreckage of his room. His toes hurt because he had kicked his bed with his bare feet. His cat despised him. His friends would all laugh at him tomorrow. His teacher, Mrs. Bennett, would be nice, he knew, but secretly she would be thinking he was the biggest dumbo in the world.

  Sam left his bedroom, slammed the door behind him, and stomped noisily down the stairs. He wailed in despair and frustration.

  "Sam," said his mother as he entered the dining room, "what took you so long?" She was serving the chicken and passing the plates. She looked at Sam and blinked in surprise. "My goodness," she said.

  "Sam, why are you crying?" asked his father. He was carefully mounding mashed potatoes on each plate that he took from Sam's mom. He looked at Sam and held a whole spoonful of potatoes in midair, forgetting to plunk it onto the plate.

  His sister, Anastasia, was just about to dip a spoon into a bowl of peas. Anastasia was always in charge of vegetables, and that was a good thing, because she understood how important it was not to let certain vegetables—like beets, especially beets—touch other things, like potatoes.

  But Anastasia, without looking, dropped a whole spoonful of peas onto a plate, right on top of a chicken leg. Some of the peas fell from the plate onto the tablecloth, and no one even noticed.

  They were all staring at Sam.

  "Why are you
naked?" Anastasia asked.

  2

  There was Chunky Monkey ice cream for dessert. That was both good and bad.

  It was good because Sam loved Chunky Monkey. It was one of his favorites. So it made him feel pretty happy to have a big bowl of Chunky Monkey in front of him, and a spoon in his hand.

  But it was bad because of its name. The name Chunky Monkey reminded Sam of his problem, his whole big problem, which he would never ever be able to solve; and thinking of his unsolvable problem made Sam feel like crying once again, even though he had already stopped crying long enough to eat his chicken.

  He had even gotten dressed—well, sort of dressed—before he climbed into his chair to eat his dinner. His mom had taken a big sweatshirt from a hook in the back hall, and dropped it over his head, and rolled up the sleeves. The sweatshirt had a picture of Beethoven on it. Beethoven was a man with a very frowny face, so his picture suited Sam perfectly. Sam was frowning, just like Beethoven.

  "I'm going to be the dumbest one in my class," he told his family again.

  "Of course you're not, Sam," his mom reassured him. "I wish Mrs. Bennett had let you know sooner, though, about Future Job Day."

  "Well," Sam confessed, "she gave us a note to bring home."

  "When did she do that?"

  "Last week."

  "For heaven's sake, Sam," his mother said, "why didn't you show me the note?"

  Sam tried to remember what had happened to the folded note from Mrs. Bennett. "I had it in my pocket," he said.

  "Yes? And then what? Did it end up in the washing machine?"

  "I do that all the time, Sam," Anastasia said. "Usually with dollar bills. They come out of the dryer all wadded up. It's hard to unfold them after they're washed and dried."

  "No," Sam said, remembering. "I took it out of my pocket and I tried to fold it into an airplane."

  "Why?" His father sounded interested.

  "I don't know. I wanted an airplane."

  "Well," his mother asked, "what happened to it after you folded it? Where were you when you made the airplane?"

  "In the carpool car."

  "Whose day was it to drive?"

  Sam thought. He remembered sitting in the back seat, next to Adam, and next to Adam was Emily, and Emily said that she might throw up, but she didn't. And he remembered that Leah's wheelchair was folded in the way-back part. Leah was in the front seat, next to—

  "It was Leah's mom," Sam said.

  "So," Mrs. Krupnik said with a sigh, "if I call Leah's mother, and ask her to look in the back seat of her station wagon, there on the floor, along with the crumpled-up McDonald's wrappers—"

  "There might not be McDonald's wrappers, Mom," Anastasia said. "Leah's mom might be very neat. She might clean her car every day."

  "No, she isn't," Sam said. "She's messy, like you. There's a whole lot of junk on the floor of her car. There's a rawhide bone that Leah's dog put there. And there's a Barbie doll, and—"

  "And a note from Mrs. Bennett, folded into an airplane. Darn it, Sam." Mrs. Krupnik sighed again.

  "No, there isn't," Sam announced. "I flew it out of the car window, right near the library. It crash-landed in a bush."

  Tomorrow was going to be Future Job Day at Sam's nursery school. The children were supposed to come, Mrs. Bennett had explained to them (and to their parents, in a note that had turned into an airplane and crash-landed in a bush), dressed the way they would dress as grown-ups, in whatever job that they hoped to have someday.

  Sam didn't really truly know what he wanted to be when he was grown up. Sometimes he thought he wanted to fly an airplane, and sometimes he thought he wanted to be the guy in the diving suit who fed the fish in the big tank at the New England Aquarium.

  All he knew for sure was that he wanted to stand in front of the class tomorrow and hear all the children go "Ooooh" when he told about his Future Job. More than anything Sam didn't want to be ordinary. He had always been ordinary, and he was tired of it. What he wanted was to be—well, he had a special name for it, a private name that he would never tell anybody. It meant somebody important, somebody interesting, somebody more than ordinary. Sam called it, just to himself, the Chief of Wonderfulness.

  "Leah has a white coat," Sam told his family, "and she's going to wear a stets———, a stetso———"

  "A Stetson hat?" asked Sam's dad. "Does Leah want to be a cowgirl?"

  "No," Sam said impatiently. "The thing you wear around your neck when you're a doctor. Leah's going to be a doctor."

  "Oh," said Mrs. Krupnik, "a stethoscope."

  "Yeah," Sam said. "A stetsocope. And Adam's going to be a fireman. He's wearing his raincoat and boots. And maybe his mom will let him bring a hatchet." Sam sighed in envy, thinking about the hatchet. It would be so cool to bring a hatchet to school. It wouldn't make you Chief of Wonderfulness, but it would be very, very cool.

  "Well, Sam," his mother suggested, "you could be a fireman, too. You have a yellow raincoat. I think you even have a plastic fireman's hat someplace. No hatchet, though. Sorry about the hatchet."

  "No!" Sam wailed. He had already thrown his raincoat on the floor of his closet. Sam didn't want to be a fireman. All of the boys were going to be firemen, except for maybe stupid old Josh, who said he was going to be an Indian—and Mrs. Bennett said no, you should say Native American; so Josh said okay, he was going to be a Native American, and he had a feathered headdress to wear.

  "Stupid Josh is going to be a Native American," Sam muttered.

  "Don't say 'stupid,' Sam," his mother said.

  "But, Mom," Anastasia pointed out, "it is stupid. You can't be a Native American unless you are Native American. That's like saying you've decided to be Italian."

  "Stupid old Josh," Sam muttered again.

  "I have an idea," Sam's dad said. "Sam, you could wear a necktie. I can lend you one..."

  Already Sam could tell he was going to hate this idea. But he waited politely for his father to finish.

  "And," Myron Krupnik went on, "you can carry a briefcase. I have an old one you can borrow. We can fill it with papers."

  "Why?" Sam asked.

  "Ta-da!" his father said proudly. "You'll be a college professor. Just like..." He waited expectantly.

  "Just like you," Sam said gloomily.

  "Dad," Anastasia said, "we love you. But that would not be a cool Future Job for Sam. It's too boring."

  Mrs. Krupnik stood up and began to stack the empty plates on top of one another so that she could take them to the kitchen. "Well, Sam," she said. "If you had brought home the note, we would have had more time to prepare. But as it is, you'll have to decide on something, and you'll have to decide on it quickly." She looked at her watch. "It's one hour until your bedtime."

  "I already decided," Sam explained angrily, "but I don't have the right clothes."

  Everyone else had finished eating dessert, but Sam hadn't even started. He picked up his spoon and put it into his ice cream.

  "Well, what did you decide?" his mother asked. "What are you planning to do as a Future Job?"

  Sam discovered that his bowl was filled with liquid. Absolutely everything was going wrong for him.

  "My Chunky Monkey!" Sam wailed. Just saying the words reminded him, once again, of his Future Job. He had been thinking about it all day. He was pretty certain that it would cause all of the children, even the ones who might have hatchets, to say "Ooooh" when he stood in front of the class. Poking his spoon into the soup that had once been ice cream, he announced it to his family.

  "A zookeeper!" Sam said.

  3

  There were a lot of things that Sam loved about his family.

  He loved that they didn't fight, the way Tucker's family did. Sam had been invited once to Tucker's house to play, on a Saturday afternoon, and he had a terrible time. Tucker's dad was raking the yard, and Tucker's mom yelled that he wasn't doing it right, and then he yelled back, and finally he slammed down the rake and said a very bad word, the S-word
, and Sam got a stomachache and wanted to go home.

  Sam's mom and dad didn't do that. They argued sometimes, but they never yelled the S-word at each other and made people have stomachaches.

  And Sam loved that his family laughed a lot and acted goofy. He sort of hoped that his friends wouldn't be there, noticing, when his mom and dad and sister acted goofy, like the time they all did a ballet in the living room, twirling around on their toes. Maybe friends wouldn't understand that and would think his family was weird.

  But Sam loved it when they all acted goofy together, just their family, like maybe holding fake microphones made out of bagels poked onto forks, and singing old Beatles songs. Sam's mom always put on dark glasses and said she was Yoko, even though Yoko wasn't really truly a Beatle. And they always let Sam be Ringo and do the drums.

  Sam thought he had been born into the best family in the world. Even times like tonight, when he was howling and crying and telling them that he had an unfixable problem, secretly he knew that his family would be able to help him fix it. So while he was wailing, he was also waiting.

  "Stop crying, Sam," his mother said. "Let's figure this out. And here: you can have some fresh ice cream." In his corner in the kitchen they could hear Sleuth leap up eagerly at the words ice cream. Sleuth's hearing was phenomenal. He came into the dining room. But no one paid any attention to the dog. Sam's mom spooned some fresh Chunky Monkey into Sam's bowl.

  "Are you certain of that choice, Sam?" Mrs. Krupnik asked. "The last time we took you to the zoo, we didn't stay as long as we had planned. Remember? It was in the summer, and it was so hot, and—"

  "The only bad thing about a zoo," Sam said, "is the smell. You could get used to it."