"In my classroom, I sit next to Brianna Brainchild. She is SO smart. Sometimes, I think she is as smart as Mrs Silliduffacus..."
Do you know someone smart? Do they sometimes make you feel not so smart? Well, it's time to discover Brianna Brainchild! She'll show you how smart a little girl can be, and you'll make the best friend you've ever had along the way!
Mrs Sillidufficus is my teacher.
In my classroom, I sit next to Brianna Brainchild. She is SO smart. Sometimes, I think she is as smart as Mrs Silliduffacus.
Every Friday afternoon, before we leave for home, Mrs Silliduffacus gives us quiz questions.
Like, “How heavy is a baby whale when it is born?”
Or, “What are our bones made from?”
Or even, “What day can we expect the next full moon?”
On Monday morning, she asks us for the answers.
I think they are hard questions. So I don’t answer any of them. But Brianna does.
She can answer any question Mrs Sillidufficus asks. She is very smart. This makes me sad. Because I don’t know ANY of the answers.
Brianna isn’t my friend. Well, she is nice, but we don’t play at little or big lunch. And she didn’t invite me to her last birthday party.
One day, Mrs Sillidufficus asked a lot of hard questions. So hard, I dropped my head on the desk with a BANG!! It hurt!
She asked, “What is the capital of Finland?
She also asked, “What year did the first person walk on the moon?”
And, “What is a group of dinosaurs called?”
How should I know? How WOULD I know?
I bet Brianna knows!
The next day, Mrs Sillidufficus asked her questions again. And Brianna knew the answers to ALL of them.
At lunch time, I stopped Brianna while she was playing football with her friends.
“How do you know the answers to all those questions”, I asked. She smiled.
“It’s a secret”, Brianna said. And ran off. This made me sadder. So I sat by myself, and ate my lunch on my own. When lunch was nearly finished, Brianna came over to me.
“You look sad”, she said to me. “Can I help?”
“I don’t know ANY of the answers to those silly questions Mrs Sillidufficus asks”, I said. “It makes me sad”
Brianna put her hand on my arm gently.
“I can help you”, she said, leading me away by my hand.
We were in the library. I think the library is boring. All it has is books.
Books, books... BOOKS.
“This is where I find my answers”. Brianna smiled and pointed to the rows of books.
“Look, I’ll show you”, she said.
Brianna took out a very big book. It had small writing, and LOTS of it! There were pictures of animals, planes and people. There were maps, and drawings.
“I open this book, and I look for the answers”, she said. “Let’s find the answer to one of the questions Mrs Sillidufficus asked last week”
I looked for the word, ‘Moon’. We found it. We kept reading. Then, there it was! The first person walked on the moon in 1969. And that person WASN’T Jimmy Josh’s dad!
So now, every Friday afternoon after school, mum, dad and I go to the library. Mum and dad flick through newspapers, and poke around at the shelves, and I look for the books that help me answer our quiz questions.
And every Monday morning, Brianna and I take turns answering them. Mrs Sillidufficus looked surprised the first time I answered.
Brianna and I secretly smiled at each other. And I don’t get sad any more.
Brianna is my BEST friend. Only a friend would help me find ALL the answers.
Edie Batstone's first book of colourful picture poems invites us to jump into a child's world of wonder and possibility, just as a child jumps into a puddle - knowing only that it seems like a good idea at the time! Join her on this journey of disco
