Bus to the Badlands Read online

  Text copyright © 2018 Margriet Ruurs

  Illustrations copyright © 2018 Claudia Dávila

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Ruurs, Margriet, 1952–, author

  Bus to the badlands / Margriet Ruurs ; illustrated by Claudia Dávila.

  (Orca echoes)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1670-1 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1671-8 (PDF).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1672-5 (EPUB)

  1. Readers (Primary). 2. Readers—Dinosaurs. I. Dávila, Claudia, illustrator II. Title. III. Series: Orca echoes

  PE1119.R88 2018 428.6 C2017-907949-2

  C2017-907950-6

  First published in the United States, 2018

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933714

  Summary: In this illustrated chapter book, a group of grade schoolers fundraise to go on a trip to the dinosaur museum in Drumheller. And make a prehistoric discovery once they get there.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Edited by Liz Kemp

  Cover artwork and interior illustrations by Claudia Dávila

  Author photo by Kees Ruurs

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  orcabook.com

  21 20 19 18 • 4 3 2 1

  Orca Book Publishers is proud of the hard work our authors do and of the important stories they create. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it or did not check it out from a library provider, then the author has not received royalties for this book. The ebook you are reading is licensed for single use only and may not be copied, printed, resold or given away. If you are interested in using this book in a classroom setting, we have digital subscriptions that feature multi user, simultaneous access to our books that are easy for your students to read. For more information, please contact [email protected].

  http://ivaluecanadianstories.ca/

  For Donna Smith and for Jan,

  best teachers ever;

  and for Arnout and Alex, who did it all.

  —MR

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AN EXCERPT FROM “THE FOSSIL HUNTERS”

  CHAPTER ONE: WHERE IS KYLE?

  CHAPTER ONE

  The first week of school is always like a yo-yo to me. The up part is being with my friends again. And I do like recess, learning new stuff and going to the library. The down part is losing my freedom. No more sleeping in or taking off on my bike to Mark’s house or to the pool.

  On the first day of school I found out that Mrs. Cupcake is my teacher this year. Her real name is Mrs. Koepke, but we call her Mrs. Cupcake. I heard she’s okay, so that part is fine. And Mr. Smart is still our principal. I always thought that was a funny name for a principal, but I guess he can’t help it. Mr. Smart is pretty cool, and there were rumors that he was leaving, so I’m glad he didn’t.

  I also found out that most of my friends are still in my class. We only have one class for each grade in our school. So I have known most of the kids since kindergarten. Except Tegan, who moved here from another country when we were in first grade. And a girl named Yvonne moved away to the east coast this summer. But other than that, Mark and Mary Jane and Alex and Angela and the others are all here.

  On day two we were supposed to learn all about Saturn and other planets. But instead of making us open our books, Mrs. Cupcake told us that she had some exciting news. Mark punched me in the back. It’s a habit he has, one I try to avoid whenever I can.

  “Hey, Josh, maybe she’ll talk until recess!” he whispered. I grinned at him.

  “I have something very important to tell you!!” Mrs. Cupcake beamed. I noticed that whenever Mrs. Cupcake gets excited, she beams—not unlike my baby sister, Angie, when she’s done something on her potty.

  “Well,” started Mrs. Cupcake, sitting on the edge of Jesse’s desk, “as you probably know, it is a custom that this class goes on a special field trip.”

  Oh yes! This was going to be good. This was what I was waiting to hear. Of course we all knew about the annual field trip!

  “Each year,” Mrs. Cupcake continued, “our Parent Advisory Council sponsors the trip and our teachers volunteer their time so that the class can go. This year we are heading to Drumheller!”

  My mom is on the Parent Advisory Council. Here, finally, was something she did that was worthwhile. Everything else was mostly embarrassing. Like showing up in the gym when we had an all-school assembly, or going to the school board to complain about the fact we didn’t have enough instruments for everyone in music class and things like that. But if my mom was getting us to Drumheller, that was all right.

  “Is that in Arkansas?” asked Dudley Jones. We mostly call him Dud.

  “No, Dudley.” Mrs. Cupcake sighed. “Drumheller is in Alberta. It’s about a six-hour ride on the school bus.”

  Holy moly! Six hours on a school bus. I didn’t know if I could handle that. Twenty minutes every day was bad enough, especially when the third graders were singing “The Never Ending Song.” But the third graders weren’t going on this field trip, so we might be okay.

  “Now, of course you know that Drumheller is famous for its dinosaur museum. We’ll be seeing dinosaur bones, dinosaur replicas, other fossils—all sorts of exciting things!” gushed Mrs. Cupcake. “We will be studying this topic in great detail before we go.”

  Mark rolled his eyes at me.

  “You will have a chance to do research into different kinds of dinosaurs. We will make a dinosaur collage, and you will be writing dinosaur stories!”

  She made it sound as if we were lucky that we would get to do schoolwork.

  “But—”

  I knew there would be a but to all this.

  “—we need to raise money to be able to go.”

  Great. There had to be a catch to going on a big field trip. They wouldn’t just let us go and have fun for a week. We’d have to work for it and earn it first.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Over the following months we made papier-mâché dinosaurs, and everything got covered in goo. I forgot there was thick goo on my hand and rubbed my hair. Mark looked like he had scales. Angela’s table got covered in guck, and so did the floor. But the end result was awesome. We put a green piece of plywood on the floor and had dinosaurs “grazing” on it—a T. rex, a Spinosaurus, a Diplodocus and a Brachiosaurus. There was also a Stegosaurus that looked like an elephant with spikes.

  We made pterodactyls and hung them from wire coat hangers. Some looked more like bats with giant teeth, but it was cool to see them dangling from the ceiling, especially when the window was open and they moved in the breeze. I even learned how to spell pterodactyl!

  We ended up talking about dinosaurs all day, every day. Our librarian, Mrs. Pringle, brought us her entire collection of dinosaur books. We studied dinosaur bones in biology. We talked about prehistoric times during history. We measured and counted dinosaur bones and dinosaur teeth in math. The only thing our teacher did not have us do was writ
e dinosaur poems.

  Mrs. Cupcake had posters of dinosaurs all over the classroom. One said Dinosaurs didn’t read. That’s why they became extinct. My favorite one showed a bunch of dinosaurs smoking. It said The real reason why dinosaurs became extinct.

  We watched dinosaur movies and had dinosaur tests. It was almost too much of a good thing.

  But even if we learned all we could before going to Drumheller, we still needed to fundraise.

  “A trip like this will cost lots of money,” said Mrs. Cupcake, looking around the room as if it was our fault. “We have to pay for the school bus and driver that will take us there. We need to buy meals for a week and arrange for a place to stay, and we have to pay entrance fees for the museum and the tours.”

  “What do we get to eat?” asked Jesse. He’s always concerned about eating. I don’t think Jesse ever stops chewing. Maybe he’s part cow. At recess, at lunch, on the bus, even just sitting in his desk, Jesse is always chomping on something.

  “Well, on the way we’ll stop in Calgary. We do that every year. Last year we stopped at a very good pizza place.” Mrs. Cupcake smiled. “And in Drumheller we can have our meals in the camp we’ll be staying at.”

  Jesse seemed content already. He wouldn’t care about dinosaurs. As long as we stopped at the pizza place he’d be happy.

  A practical question popped into my head. I raised my hand.

  “Yes, Josh?”

  “How will we raise the money?” I asked.

  “I’m glad you asked.” Mrs. Cupcake jumped up from the desk and began pacing back and forth in front of the classroom. “We need to come up with some new ideas. I mean, we simply can’t go around selling any more chocolates.”

  We all chuckled. Someone selling chocolates had come to every house at least twice in the past few weeks. Pleasant Valley is a pretty small town, and we have three schools close together. When one school does a fundraiser, they always hope the other schools won’t be doing the same thing. But this year one school chose to sell chocolate-covered almonds and so did a hockey team. The 4-H Club had sold chocolate-covered mints, and the Scouts had just finished selling cream-filled chocolates for their fundraiser! The whole town had been chomping on chocolate-covered almonds and chewing chocolate mints for weeks now. There were boxes of chocolates on the counter in the bank and at the checkouts in the grocery store. There were even baskets full of boxes of chocolate-covered almonds in the hardware store. No, selling chocolate was definitely not an option.

  “Also, we don’t want to sell gift wrap,” Mrs. Cupcake added. “Our school sold gift wrap last year just before Christmas, and our Parent Advisory Council decided that it really wasn’t very environmentally friendly.”

  That sounded like my mom, all right. She was always telling me to get out of the shower fast, because using up all the water wasn’t environmentally friendly. You’d think I was doing my environment a favor by taking a shower.

  “How about a pizza sale?” asked Jesse. Self-interest.

  “Well...” said Mrs. Cupcake. She said well a lot. If we got a dime for each time she said well, we probably wouldn’t need to fundraise for our trip. “Well, I think we should think of something more unique. Something our community needs. Something that can be a community service as well as a fundraiser.”

  “Selling pizza would be a service to the community,” Jesse insisted.

  Mary Jane raised her hand. “How about selling things people can use for Christmas?” she asked.

  “Now there’s a good idea,” Mrs. Cupcake said, smiling. “I know the Parent Advisory Council has catalogs from companies that have things we could sell door-to-door. I’ll ask them to drop some off so we can all have a look at them to see what we might choose to sell that people can use for Christmas.”

  “How about a book sale—a used-book sale?” asked Angela.

  “Or a garage sale! I have lots of junk at home I can bring,” volunteered Mark.

  In the end we sold Christmas ornaments door-to-door. It wasn’t that much fun, but people bought them, and we did end up making a lot of money. We also had several car washes, which were lots of fun, and a few cupcake sales. We put a jar of jelly beans on the counter in the school office. If you wanted to guess how many beans were in there, you had to pay a dollar, and if you were right, you could win the whole jar. All the kindergarten kids wanted to win it, so they made lots of guesses. My favorite way to make money was when we had a sale in the gym. I brought lots of old stuff to school, including my old comics and a plastic train track that I outgrew a long time ago. I bought Adam’s old comics and Tegan bought mine. I bought some of Angela’s DVDs and a karate medal. Mostly we all ended up taking each other’s stuff home.

  Finally we had raised enough money. The Parent Advisory Council matched our funds, and by the end of the dinofilled school year we were ready to go on our week-long field trip to Drumheller!

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Why can’t I bring my iPod?” Alex whined when Mrs. Cupcake told us we were not allowed to bring electronics on our field trip.

  She sighed. “We’re going unplugged,” she said. “Old-fashioned talking to each other and going on hikes.”

  Mark and I were excited when we finally started the real preparations for our trip.

  “Make sure you pack everything in one small suitcase or backpack. I don’t want to see luggage as if you’re going to Europe for a month!” said Mr. Jenkins, our math teacher. He would chaperone the boys. Mrs. Cupcake would look after the girls. One mother, who was a nurse, was coming to help. I was glad it wasn’t my mom.

  Mr. Jenkins gave us a list of what to bring. “And be here Monday morning at 6:00 AM. The bus leaves at 6:15 sharp!” he warned.

  We moaned and groaned. I have never even seen the world at that hour. I packed my things on Sunday. Pants, a sweater, underwear, that sort of stuff. I took a flashlight, just in case. And essentials, like comic books. And my baseball cap. Then I went to bed early and set my alarm for 5:00 AM. Yikes.

  It seemed like the middle of the night when the alarm went off. I pounded on the clock and turned over. Two minutes later my mom shook me awake.

  “If you don’t want to miss this field trip, you better get going!” she said.

  I tore myself out of bed and stumbled into the shower.

  I was still half asleep when we got to school. It looked weird—everybody was there, but it was barely light outside. The school bus was waiting. I was glad to see that Mr. Harmsen was the driver. He’s cool. He doesn’t constantly yell at us to be quiet.

  Mark came running up as soon as we parked. My mom opened the back of the car and I lifted my bag out. “See ya, mom!” I waved. But she came over anyway and had to give me a big hug, and a kiss, right in front of everyone.

  Jesse was there, and Adam too. His dog, Picasso, ran around the school grounds. Whenever he came close to the pile of luggage, all the girls started to scream. Picasso had a habit of peeing on things.

  As soon as Mrs. Cupcake said it was okay, we boarded the bus. Mark and I sat close to the back. I pulled out some gum and settled in for a long ride. “Man, I don’t know about this,” Mark sighed. “Six hours on this bus!”

  “You’ll get used to it,” I said, taking the top off my bottle of grape soda.

  “Is that your breakfast?” Mary Jane asked, wrinkling her nose.

  “Let’s count heads!” Mrs. Cupcake called from the front of the bus. “Who isn’t here yet?”

  Of course, several kids said, “Me!”

  I looked around. “Dudley,” I said. “Has anyone seen him yet?”

  “Dudley isn’t here yet, Mrs. Cupcake!” Mark yelled. Just then an ancient Jeep pulled up behind the bus, and Dudley tumbled out. His dad, a tall skinny man with a long ponytail, hauled an old suitcase toward the bus.

  “Hey! He’s here!” Adam yelled.

  As soon as Dudley was on board, Mrs. Cupcake counted heads again. Then Mr. Harmsen started the bus. Pretty soon we were rolling out of the school groun
ds. Picasso chased the bus, and parents waved. We were on our way to the Badlands.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  By the time we had been driving for an hour, we were all sick and tired of the bus. And Angela really was sick. She was sitting in the front row, looking green, with her nose in a plastic bag.

  My grape soda was all gone. Mark’s chips were finished, and we were getting pretty bored. Mr. Jenkins was telling riddles near the middle of the bus, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  “This is gonna be the longest trip of my life,” Mark complained.

  We played Rock, Paper, Scissors. We talked about cool bands and played cards. We played My Grandmother Is Weird and tried to spot license plates from faraway places. We talked about things we usually never talk about. When we’re at school, things seem different. Now we had time to just talk. I didn’t know that Jesse’s dad was a policeman or that Angela had an aunt who lived in Africa and that Angela had been there. Dudley’s dad was really different from most of our fathers. He was a pacifist who went to protest meetings to prevent forests from being cut down and things like that. “We live out of town because my parents want to live off the land,” Dudley told us. And I didn’t know that Mary Jane’s parents were divorced.

  When we drove through a town, we read advertisements on signs and looked for stores we knew. Mr. Harmsen had given us strict rules about not leaning out of the windows, but Jesse stuck his head out and yelled at a motorcyclist. Mrs. Cupcake nearly had a heart attack and told him she would send him right home if he did it again!

  I think I must have dozed off, because I woke up with a start when the bus went over some bumps in the road. We were getting close to Calgary, on a long straight stretch of highway, the snowcapped Rocky Mountains behind us. Fields on either side had little in them but tumbleweed. Suddenly I heard Mr. Harmsen swear really loudly. I thought I saw sparks flying over the hood of the bus. The bus swerved, waking everybody else up, and Mr. Harmsen pulled over and stopped, tires screeching.