Start of a Kid's Book

Here is a clipping from a story I started back in 2004... The story is intended for 3rd to 4th grade students

CHAPTER ONE
Right Before the Trouble Started

Brandon’s trouble started months ago. In fact it all started back at his Third Grade Open House.
It was nearing the end of year. Brandon had just completed a great year with Mr. Davenport. Mr. Davenport was a cool teacher who gave out candy sticks and showed movies for class parties. But now that Open House was nearing, Mr. Davenport started acting differently.
Just a week before the big night Brandon noticed they spent nearly the entire cleaning and scrubbing the classroom. On the day of Open House, Brandon and his classmates were given the task to cover all of Mr. Davenport’s odds and ends with old bed sheets.
“Parents don’t need to look at all of these things.” Mr. Davenport explained to his students as he pulled a pink and yellow flowered sheet from the cupboard. “Clara and Jasmine, you two girls go clean the sink. Mark and Jonah you can dust off the computers. Everyone else clean out your desks while I get more sheets. I need more sheets! How did this classroom get so messy?”
Brandon thought it was funny seeing an adult running around trying to clean before the parents came to inspect. Brandon knew the feeling. Every Saturday before Brandon could go out and play ball, his room would be inspected. Brandon supposed Open House was the equivalent to the Saturday Morning Inspection at his house. Not that Mr. Davenport had anything to worry about; his classroom was one of the coolest in the schools.

* * * * *
His mom had arrived home early from work. She stood in the kitchen preparing an early dinner, which looked like it had a lot of vegetables in it.
“Hi there, Sweetie.” She still called Brandon Sweetie even though he was almost nine years old.
“Hey, mom.” Brandon replied as he reached for a shoebox he had placed on a nearby shelf.
“How was school today, Sweetie?” she asked while chopping a carrot into small pieces.
“We learned and stuff.” Brandon replied now sitting at the kitchen table sorting his baseball cards by team.
“Oh I love stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuff.” she said with a smirk on her face.
Brandon put his baseball cards down and smiled at his mom. Brandon’s mom always wanted to know what was going on at school. She never liked it when he said he said “stuff”. She figured it was because he was trying to hide something (Which was the case when Brandon lost his watch on the playground and the time he earned a C- on his big Social Studies test). But today there was nothing to hide; he was just being lazy with his words.
“Well, Mr. Davenport had us do a lot of cleaning.” Brandon continued working on his cards and matched two Dodger teammates together.
“Oh really?” she relplied with a bit of a smile on her face, “Well, at least he can get you clean.”
“Yeah,” Brandon blushed remembering his laundry he didn’t put away, “Oh, and I finished painting my map of South America and the Amazon Rainforest for tonight.”
“Now that’s worth seeing.” Brandon’s mom unpacked a few more unknown vegetables on to the counter.
“It’s ok, I guess. Patricia said it looks like an elephant painted it.” Patricia was the know-it-all girl who always tried to boss Brandon around. “But when I told that to Mr. Davenport what he said, Mr. Davenport said he’d never met an elephant who knew how to paint Brazil the way I did.”
Brandon’s mom smiled and dropped the now chopped vegetables into a large black pot on the stove.
“Well I don’t know anything about elephants who paint, but I once knew an elephant who could dance ballet.”
“Mom!” Brandon blushed, his mom always made up eccentric stories.
“Well, elephants or not, I must say I’m excited to peek into the forth grade classes. I can’t believe you are already going into the fourth grade!”
“Not for three months. Remember summer comes first!” Brandon couldn’t believe his mother was already thinking about the next school year! He had barely started to plan his summer of baseball games and sleepovers and she was already thinking about school.
Brandon’s mother finished adding ingredients to what looked like a vegetable soup before she reminded him that he would need to get washed up for Open House.
Open House was always a lot of fun, but he felt like he was on show, like one of those little dogs on the Thanksgiving Day Shows. His mom would want to parade him in front of the judges (The teachers in this case) and tell them all of the great things he knew how to do. At least dogs got treats.
But this year things would be different at Open House, and this is where all of the trouble began.