The lazy boy

Greetings everyone!  Bugzy here.  Hope you are having a good week and are staying warm.  Recently, I have heard someone talk about the "McGuffey Readers."  According to the library staff helping me,  they started in 1836. The books were published as a series of grade school readers for kids by William Holmes McGuffey.  They contained reading lessons as well as a strong moral lesson in each story.  Since then, the McGuffey Readers have sold over 120 million copies, putting them into numbers sold behind the Bible and Webster's Dictionary.

These readers are very interesting.  They are written in plain English, are easy to follow, teach good grammar and vocabulary.  But when it comes to the "moral lesson",  the Readers hit you over the head with it, so you don't miss it.

This is my attempt at a McGuffey Reader-type story.  It's my first try.

Bugzy

Once there was a boy named Kevin.  He was full of energy.  He loved to run and play sports outdoors.  Especially football and basketball.  He also liked to play video games.  He could sit and play for hours, until his parents made him get up and go do something else.  Kevin took pride in how long he could play video games, and how far he could run.  His only problem was when it came to his school work, he was lazy.

Kevin didn't want to read or work hard at school.  He didn't want to study, practice math problems, or write a paper.  He only wanted to do what he wanted to do.  His grades were always low, and his parents were always having to talk to his teachers.

One day, his teacher assigned the class to read "Alice in Wonderland."  They were going to have to take a test in class on it, and the test would make up a lot of their grade in English.  But the teacher, Ms. Gustasson, gave them three weeks to read it.  She assured the class that she would be available for help if they had problems reading the book.  Ms. Gustasson had called the local public library, and arranged for enough copies of the book for everyone.  All they had to do was to go pick it up and read it.

"Oh boy"  Kevin thought.  This is going to such an easy "A" to get.  I'll get an A and my parents will be proud of me.  I will just wait until the day before the test and watch the movie, he thought.  "This is going to be so easy". Ms. Gustasson will never know I didn't read the book.

So Kevin ran and played every day after school.  He played outside and went in and played his video games.  Whenever his parents asked him about his schoolwork, he told them he was already finished or didn't have any.  

The day before the test, Kevin asked his mother to take him to the library.   She said she would do it and hoped it would spur a greater interest in reading.  They had the movie of "Alice in Wonderland" and he checked it out.  He told his mother that they had to read the book, but not until next month.

The day of the test, Kevin was totally calm and relaxed. He had the english test aced.  He get lots of praise from his parents and from Ms. Gustasson.  It was 10:00am, time for English class.  Ms. Gustasson walked around the room and handed out the test.  She wished them all good luck.

Kevin picked up the test and started reading it.  His heart started racing.  He could feel it beating.  He broke out in a cold sweat.  He didn't know the answers to any of the questions!  It was like Ms. Gustasson had watched the movie and wrote the test so you could ONLY answer the questions if you had read the book.  

Kevin wrote a few things down and handed the test in.  The next day, Ms. Gustasson returned it to him with a big F on the top and a 0 score.  His parents were so upset, they took away his video games.  They made him show them every night before dinner what his assignments were and made him work on them all night.  Kevin flunked English and had to re-take it in the summer, so the school wouldn't let him play sports.

Kevin learned never try to get out of hard work by trying to be more clever than someone else.

PEACE
LOVE
BOOKS
BUGZY!!