Owen Foote, Mighty Scientist

  Owen Foote, Mighty Scientist

  Stephanie Greene

  * * *

  Illustrated by CAT BOWMAN SMITH

  * * *

  CLARION BOOKS • NEW YORK

  * * *

  To John Waszak, a teacher who changes lives

  —S. G.

  For my pals Max, Harry, Grant, Adam,

  Kai, Devie, Kevin, Allison, Connor, Brendan,

  Hannah, Maryn, and Chase

  —C. B. S.

  Clarion Books

  a Houghton Mifflin Company imprint

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003

  Text copyright © 2004 by Stephanie Greene

  Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Cat Bowman Smith

  The text was set in 13.5-point Palatino.

  The illustrations were executed in pen and ink.

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

  write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003.

  www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Greene, Stephanie.

  Owen Foote, mighty scientist / by Stephanie Greene; illustrated by

  Catherine Bowman Smith,

  p. cm.

  Summary: Third-grade best friends Owen and Joseph struggle to come up

  with a great science fair project that they will both enjoy doing; then something

  goes wrong and they have to change their plans two days before the fair.

  ISBN 0-618-43016-4

  [1. Science projects—Fiction. 2. Tadpoles—Fiction. 3. Lizards as pets—Fiction.

  4. Best friends—Fiction. 5. Friendship—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction.]

  I. Smith, Cat Bowman, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.G8434Out 2004

  [Fic]—dc22 2003027072

  ISBN-13: 978-0-618-43016-1 ISBN-10: 0-618-43016-4

  QUM 10 9 8 7 6

  * * *

  CONTENTS

  1 "Those Are the Ones I Want" / [>]

  2 Lab Coats, Here We Come! / [>]

  3 Lizard Talk / [>]

  4 "Eureka!" / [>]

  5 All Handfuls Aren't the Same / [>]

  6 The Perfect Project / [>]

  7 A Catastrophe of Major Proportions / [>]

  8 Outside the Box / [>]

  9 Side by Side / [>]

  1. "Those Are the Ones I Want"

  "Those," said Owen. He pointed to the small gray lizards in the aquarium labeled UROMASTYX.

  "Those are the ones I want," he said.

  "I don't even know how to say it," said Joseph.

  "It's euro, like in Europe," Owen told him. "Euro-mass-ticks."

  Owen was staring at the pile of squirming lizards that were trying to claw their way to the top of the heap over one another's backs. Their beaklike mouths looked razor-sharp. Their wide, flat tails were covered with plates like armor.

  Every one of their toes had a long, pointy nail at the end of it.

  They were the most incredible things Owen had ever seen.

  "They look like prehistoric monsters," Joseph said uneasily.

  "I know. Aren't they great?"

  As they watched, one of the largest lizards finally fought its way to the top of the writhing pile. It teetered for a second with its leg extended toward the lip of the aquarium. Then it toppled backwards and slid to the bottom.

  It got to its feet and began fighting its way to the top again.

  "I'd have nightmares if I kept one of those in my room," said Joseph.

  Owen reached out to pet one of the smaller lizards sitting in one corner of the aquarium. It swiveled its head around when it saw his finger coming and stared up at it expectantly.

  "See how intelligent it is?" he said. "I think it already knows me."

  "I think it's about to bite you," said Joseph.

  "No, these guys are really friendly I've read about them." Owen touched the lizard's back lightly with his finger. The lizard made a dash for the other side of the aquarium.

  "Come on, Owen." Joseph tugged at Owen's sleeve. "Your mom said half an hour, remember?"

  Owen looked up at the bleachers. He had forgotten all about his mom. She had followed him and Joseph around the Reptile and Amphibian Show for a while. Then she said she was going to read while she waited for them.

  Owen couldn't understand how anyone could read when they could be petting a lizard. But as much as he had encouraged her, his mom didn't seem to want to touch anything.

  "I don't know, Owen," she had said when he dragged her over to look at a huge white frog with pink eyes and a stomach that oozed out around it like a plate. "Some of these things make me a little queasy."

  "I know what you mean," said Joseph.

  "Want to wait with me, Joseph?" Owen's mom said with a smile.

  "Are you kidding?" Owen threw his arm around Joseph's shoulders. "Joseph's no wimp. He loves this stuff as much as I do. Except the snakes—right, Joseph?"

  "Right."

  Owen and Joseph had kept going. They stopped at dozens of tables. Looked at all kinds of animals. There were tarantulas with hairy legs. Colorful poison dart frogs. Millipedes that looked like huge cockroaches. A swamp turtle shaped like a leaf.

  Owen had seen lots of them before. It was his third show. But it was Joseph's first time. Owen had promised him they would avoid the snakes. He hadn't counted on the four-hundred-pound boa constrictor curled up on the floor inside a playpen by the front door.

  He thought Joseph was going to faint when he saw it.

  Owen pulled him away from it as quickly as he could, but Joseph's face hadn't lost its mildly terrified expression ever since. Owen usually would have noticed. Today he was too busy peering.

  To Owen, every table was more interesting than the one before. The lizards interested him the most.

  He couldn't get enough of them.

  He stopped at every lizard table. He asked questions and read pamphlets. They had stopped at the uromastyx table earlier. Now they were back. This time, Owen wasn't budging.

  Joseph looked at his watch for the fourth time. "Really, Owen. It's late."

  "Now I know what they remind me of," Owen said. "Miniature Triceratops without the horns."

  When he was in kindergarten, Owen had wanted to study dinosaurs when he grew up. He loved how huge dinosaurs were. How ferocious. But after a while he realized they were all dead.

  Owen didn't want to study animals that were dead. He wanted to study animals that were alive. Animals that ate and burrowed and swam and grew.

  Weird animals that looked exotic.

  Dangerous, even.

  The kind of animal that would make your sister scream if it got loose in her room.

  A uromastyx.

  "What if those guys are man-eaters?" Joseph said. He sounded nervous. "My mom might not let me spend the night at your house again."

  "I'm almost positive they're vegetarians," said Owen. He looked at the man in the muscle shirt behind the table. He had a long blond pony tail and an eyebrow ring. The snake tattoo that started at his shoulder wound down around his arm to his wrist.

  Owen had noticed that a lot of the people at the Reptile and Amphibian Show had tattoos. And earrings in places other than their ears. And T-shirts with glow-in-the-dark reptile designs.

  "Excuse me," Owen said.

  The man put down the brochures he was folding and came over to them. "What can I do for you boys?" he said.

  "How big will the uromastyx get?" said Owen. It made him feel mature, saying a word like uromastyx. He didn'
t sound like a little kid who was excited about lizards.

  He sounded like someone who knew something.

  "About a foot long." The man held his hands apart. "Maybe five or six pounds."

  "A whole foot?" Joseph said.

  "They're vegetarians, right?" said Owen.

  "Right. They eat mostly green stuff. The darker, the better. Kale, spinach, romaine ... anything but iceberg," said the man. "It's nothing but water."

  "That's what my mother always says," said Owen. "My dad loves iceberg, but she won't let him eat it."

  His fist had closed around the wad of bills in his pocket while they talked. All he had was fifteen dollars. So far the only things he'd seen that he could afford were turtles and newts.

  Joseph had a turtle. Owen would never say it, but he thought turtles were kind of boring. Nice, but boring. And Owen had gotten two newts last summer. When he first got them, they were really exciting. Now they weren't enough. Compared with lizards, newts were like a bicycle with training wheels.

  Baby stuff.

  He looked at the man hopefully. "How much do they cost?"

  "Twenty dollars."

  Owen was crushed.

  "Too bad," said Joseph. He sounded relieved. "At least you won't get salmonella," he added helpfully.

  Owen was too busy thinking to listen. If his mom lent him five dollars, he could do it. He'd promise to clean his room without having to be told. And take out the garbage. And clean his bathroom....

  Wait a minute—no need to go crazy here.

  "Thanks," he said abruptly. "Come on, Joseph."

  Owen slipped between the couple standing behind them and took off. By the time Joseph caught up with him, he was coming back down the bleachers with his mom in tow.

  "Wait till you see them," he was saying. "You'll fall in love with them."

  "I wouldn't bet on it, Owen," she said. "How much do they cost?"

  "The man said they're really intelligent. And they don't bite, like some lizards." Owen kept talking as fast as he could. He knew his mom. If he told her how much they cost, she'd make up her mind right here and now. But if she saw the uromastyx first, she might just fall in love with them.

  Then they could talk money.

  It worked. Maybe his mom wasn't madly in love, but she liked them. He could tell.

  "They are kind of interesting," she said, looking into the aquarium. "They're like something out of a science fiction movie."

  "Feeding them is no problem," Owen said quickly. "All they eat is lettuce. But not iceberg. You were right about that one, Mom. Iceberg's nothing but water."

  "Flattery will get you nowhere," his mom said dryly. But she was smiling. Owen felt a glimmer of hope.

  "How big do they get?" she asked.

  "It'll fit in my twenty-gallon aquarium, easy," said Owen. "You're lucky I don't want an iguana. They get to be five feet long. People have to build special shelves for them all over the house so they can wander around."

  "Spare me that," said Mrs. Foote. Then her expression changed. From the look in her eyes Owen could tell the Big Question was coming.

  "How much?" she asked again.

  "Twenty dollars." Owen held up his wad of money. "All I need to borrow is five dollars."

  "Oh, Owen." His mom wasn't smiling anymore. "That seems like a lot of money—"

  "Please, Mom? I might want to be a herpetologist when I grow up. I need to start studying these things."

  His mom's mouth had settled into the thin line that meant no. "I thought you wanted to be a paleontologist," she said.

  "Not anymore," said Owen. "I love lizards. You know I do. I've loved them since I got Socrates and Plato last year. I've read a million books about them."

  "Yes, but twenty dollars?"

  "Please?" Owen pleaded. "I'll pay you back."

  His mom looked at him for a long minute. Finally, she sighed.

  "What if you decide you want to be a marine biologist?" she said. "Will we have to buy you a whale?"

  It took Owen only a second to pick the lizard he wanted. The small one in the corner. It had finally

  stopped running away from him. Now when Owen reached out to pet it, it cocked its head to one side and stared back with one bright eye.

  The man put it in a box with a clear lid and gave Owen a pamphlet on uromastyx.

  Owen and Joseph followed Mrs. Foote out to the car.

  "What are you going to name him?" Joseph asked.

  "I was thinking about Chuck," said Owen.

  "Chuck?" Mrs. Foote laughed. "Isn't that kind of a strange choice after Plato and Socrates?"

  "Chuck's not as thoughtful as those two," Owen said. "I can tell. If he was a kid, he'd like football."

  "Good heavens," said his mom. "How can you tell?"

  "I know these things," Owen said.

  "How do you know it's a boy?" said Joseph.

  "It just feels like one."

  Joseph had a point, though. Owen had forgotten to ask the man what Chuck was. But he didn't want to lift up a lizard he hardly knew and peer at its naked belly. It felt kind of rude.

  "I'll check in my book to make sure," he said. "If it's a girl, I'll call her Carlotta."

  "If...," said Mrs. Foote as she opened the car door, "...you promise to feed Chuck and give him fresh water and clean his cage once a week—"

  "Defecatoria," said Owen. He slid onto the back seat with the box balanced carefully in his lap. "Uromastyx are very neat. They only poop in one area of their cage. It's called the defecatoria."

  "Defecatoria, then," said Mrs. Foote. She fixed him with a beady eye in the rearview mirror. "If you do all of that without being reminded, Owen, you can consider the five dollars a gift."

  "Thanks, Mom," he said. "You can be Chuck's grandmother. And you can be his godfather, Joseph. I'll let you hold him when we get home."

  "I don't mind waiting," Joseph said quickly. "You should probably bond with him first."

  "Good idea," said Owen. "It would be terrible if he thought you were his father instead of me."

  "You can say that again," said Joseph.

  2. Lab Coats, Here We Come!

  "Boys and girls?" Mrs. McBride grabbed a stack of paper from her desk and waved it in the air above her head. "Before you leave, I'm going to hand out the information about the science fair."

  Owen flashed Joseph a quick look across the aisle and made the thumbs-up sign. He had been waiting for this all year.

  "Make sure you show this to your parents," their teacher said. "The science fair is in three weeks. Mr. Wozniak would like to have as many of you as possible participate." She handed everyone a paper as she moved slowly down the aisle toward Owen. "There will be sessions in the library after school for those of you who need help. Volunteers will be there to help you get started.

  "The important thing to remember," she went on in a loud voice as she handed Owen his copy, "is that you need to come up with a project you can do on your own or as a team. It's fine if your parents want to give you a bit of help. But you need to be the one who does the work."

  "Try telling that to Anthony," Owen muttered.

  Last year Anthony did a project on astronomy. His father took the photographs with his expensive telescope. He typed the descriptions below them, too. It looked as if all Anthony had done was sign his name.

  Thinking about the second prize Anthony won still made Owen mad. If judges couldn't tell the difference between a project a kid did by himself and one his parents did for him, they should let kids be the judges.

  Kids could tell every time.

  He quickly scanned the notice Mrs. McBride had handed him. It had dates and rules and information about prizes. Words like hypothesis and scientific method were written in bold type.

  Owen could hardly wait to get home and read it. He loved the science fair. Chesterfield School had held it for the first time when he was in the first grade. Owen could still remember how amazing the projects had seemed to him.

  Last y
ear he and Joseph did a project on evaporation. It embarrassed Owen every time he thought about how babyish it had been. Neither of them had cared that it didn't win anything.

  They were only in the second grade. They still thought working for nothing was fun.

  This year was different.

  This year Owen had to win a prize. If he didn't, Mr. Wozniak would never know who Owen was. How much Owen loved science.

  He wouldn't pick Owen to be in his fourth-grade class.

  Owen knew that if he didn't get into Mr. Wozniak's class, he would die.

  Lots of kids who liked science wanted to be in that class. Owen didn't just want to be there. He felt as if he belonged there.

  When it came to science, there wasn't another teacher in Chesterfield School like Mr. Wozniak. Or another classroom like his. Every time Owen walked past it, he felt as though he was walking past a magic place.

  A sign over the door said LAND OF woz. There was a rainbow above it. And a picture of a wizard with a peaked hat and a wand.

  Mr. Wozniak's students were called Wizards. The ones who followed the class rules and worked hard were awarded a special Wizard pass. It allowed them to stay inside at recess and play chess if they wanted. Even walk to the media center by themselves.

  The classroom walls were lined with aquariums. A tiger salamander named Elliot lived in one. Next to him was Big Mac, a yellow-bellied slider. Then Boinky, a huge box turtle. There were lizards and newts and snakes.

  And in one, a lone frog named Hip.

  "It was Hip and Hop," one of the Wizards told Owen's class last year when they were touring Critter Island. "But Hop ran away."

  To Owen, Critter Island was the most special part of it all. Mr. Wozniak's class built it every year. First, they pushed all the tables together and covered them with plywood. Then they took shredded newspaper and flour and water and made papier-mache. They built mountains and streams and lakes.

  They painted trees and grass and water.

  Then all the Wizards chose an animal they liked and studied it until they were experts. When the younger classes came in for a tour during the last week of school, the Wizards stood around in white lab coats and talked about their animals.