Muckabout School
At Muckabout School, pupils are not allowed to behave. IT IS FORBIDDEN. It’s bad to be good and it’s good to be bad. So running in corridors, being rude to teachers, never saying ‘sorry’ and being foul to your friends is the right way to behave.In New Boy at Muckabout, poor Gary Goody is finding it difficult to fit in. He gets to school early, he calls his teacher ‘Sir’, and he combs his hair. He spends ages trying to write neatly and even says sorry when he has done something wrong. When will he ever learn NOT to behave. After several thousand tries at being bad, Gary finally succeeds in the most wicked plan ever. But just as he is about to received his Head Boy’s badge, everything goes horribly wrong.In Muckabout Outing, the local zoo is in danger of closing and Muckabout School are planning their annual outing. But when local reporter Roger Hack records what the children get up to, things don’t quite go according to plan.With his unique sense of humour, familiar to readers of Little Wolf, Ian Whybrow has created another hilarious series of stories, set in the familiar, but not so familiar, world of Muckabout School.
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First Published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2005
This electronic edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text copyright © Ian Whybrow 2005
Illustrations by Steve May 2005
Ian Whybrow and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.
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Source ISBN: 9780007158768
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780007390625 Version: 2015-07-23
Contents
Gary Goody walked through the empty corridors of Muckabout School to his new classroom. He entered and stopped in his tracks.
“Oh no!” he thought. “I’m the first to arrive – again!”
He was just about to go back out to the playground when he heard a snort from behind the teacher’s desk. It was Mr Dawdle just waking up from a nap. The lazy teacher straightened his sunglasses and stared straight at Gary.
“Gary!” Mr Dawdle groaned. “You’re early again!”
Mr Dawdle dragged himself out of his comfortable armchair and stumbled over to where Gary was. In any other school, Mr Dawdle would have been a disgrace. He was as tall and skinny as a beanpole, with greasy hair scragged into a ponytail. His jeans and T-shirt were filthy and full of holes and he peered at Gary through sunglasses that were smeared with what looked like tomato ketchup.
“I’m sorry,” sighed Gary.
“You should know the rules by now, yeah?” the teacher said, producing a biscuit from his pocket. He dusted the biscuit off and popped it into his mouth, chewing the biscuit as he yawned. “Well? What are they?” the teacher asked, spraying Gary with crumbs.
“Run in the corridors,” Gary said.
“Uh-huh,” said Mr Dawdle.
“Don’t put up your hand. Be rude to teachers. Don’t mind your manners. Always eat in class.”
“And…?”
“…and never be on time,” Gary said, quietly.
“Never be on time. Exactly, man. So what’s so difficult? I haven’t seen you run once, you’re polite to everyone, you always say sorry and thank you (and please, come to think of it). And I haven’t seen you eating anything in class all week.”
“Sorry, sir,” Gary replied.
“There you go again,” Mr Dawdle grumbled. “You’re just so… nice. You’ll give Muckabout School a good name if you’re not careful. It really isn’t bad enough you know. Not bad enough at all. So maybe you should stay in at playtime and write the school motto one hundred times! Know what I mean?”
“Yes sir. Sorry sir.”
“And cool it with the ‘sorry’ all the time, OK?”
Gary was such a good, well-behaved child that his anxious parents thought there must be something wrong with him. That’s why they had sent him to Muckabout School. The “Muckabout Method” promised to make children happy and confident “through jollification and tomfoolery”. Of course, that was really a fancy way of saying that it encouraged children to be naughty, but it sounded to Gary’s mum and dad to be just the sort of thing Gary needed to make him a bit more normal.
The trouble was, Gary didn’t really belong at Muckabout School. He just wasn’t very good at… mucking about.
That’s why at playtime on this, his fifth day at his new school, poor Gary felt it was his duty to stay indoors and write “Muckabout for ever!” until his arm ached. He glanced out of the window at the other children in the playground. They were having a great time playing football.
Franky Fearless, who kicked the ball again and again, might have scored if it wasn’t for the giant William Whale, who blocked the goalmouth. Tim Tattle, the class stirrer, was encouraging Ricky Rude to pelt everyone with smelly mud. Whilst the others were busy, Wanda Offalot was quietly slipping out of the school gates.
Gary looked back at the lines he was writing.
“At least I’m getting into Mr Dawdle’s good books,” he thought.
It was ages before all the children came back into the classroom. They threw themselves on the floor in front of the telly. “Video, video, video, video!” they chanted.
