Lulu and the Duck in the Park

Albert Whitman & Company

Chicago, Illinois

UK

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Lulu was famous for animals. Her famousness for animals was known throughout the whole neighborhood.

Animals mattered more to Lulu than anything else in the world. All animals, from the sponsored polar bear family that had been her best Christmas present, to the hairiest unwanted spider in the school coat room.

Lulu loved them all. She was always rescuing and comforting and carrying animals home.

Lulu might have been famous for other things, such as the way she ate apples, which left no apple at all, except the stalk and the seeds.

Or for jumping off swings, right at the highest point of the swing. (Swing jumping was a bad and dangerous habit of Lulu’s that caused her many sore hands and scraped knees.)

“Crazy!” said Lulu’s cousin Mellie when Lulu jumped off swings. It was usually Mellie who hauled Lulu up after a swing jump and carried her bag while she hobbled home.

“Crazy! Nuts! Don’t do it!” Mellie would say while Lulu inspected her new bruises, and she would nearly always add, “If you’re going home now, can I come with you to see the animals?” Because whatever else Lulu did, it was her huge collection of animals that she was known for most of all.

“You know you can,” Lulu would reply. “You always can. You know that.”

Lulu and Mellie were best friends, as well as cousins. Mellie was famous for very long silences, sudden attacks of the giggles, and losing things. Hats and gloves, pencil cases and gym bags, school clothes and school books never seemed to stay long with Mellie. They waited until she looked away, and vanished.

Mellie was very, very famous for losing things, but not as famous as Lulu was for animals. It was lucky for Lulu that her father was famous for peering at the latest arrival and saying, “Hmmm. Well. Ask your mom.”

And it was very lucky for Lulu that her mother was famous for saying, “The more, the merrier.”

That was Lulu’s mother’s law on pets.

The More, the Merrier

As Long as Lulu Cleans up after Them.

Lulu did not just clean up after them. She played with them and talked to them. She exercised them and fed them. She looked them up in library books and Googled them on the Internet. She thought about them.

“What would I want,” wondered Lulu, “if I were a hamster in a cage? A spider in a bath? The Class Three guinea pig?”

Lulu’s hamster had cardboard mazes to explore, and surprise parcels of nuts to unwrap. The spiders in Lulu’s house had a little rope ladder to help them out of the bath. The Class Three guinea pig went home with Lulu for holidays and had a wonderful time going on outings to the park.

“Thank goodness I don’t have to take him home,” said Mrs. Holiday, Lulu’s class teacher (famous for her cookie tin of exotic cookies, and her icy-blue glares).

“
Mrs
.
Holiday!”
said Lulu, shocked. “He’s an amazing guinea pig! For a guinea pig.”

“I’m sure he is,” agreed Mrs. Holiday. “But I am not a guinea pig sort of person. In fact,” added Mrs. Holiday, “I could manage quite happily with no guinea pigs at all.”

When the Class Three guinea pig was more annoying than usual (his bathroom habits were awful and he chewed up anything leaning against his cage), Mrs. Holiday would glare at him and say, “Hmmm!”

“Don’t you like animals, Mrs. Holiday?” Lulu asked once.

“I like animals,” said Mrs. Holiday, “in the wild. Perfectly happy, but a long way off!”

Lulu agreed about the animals being perfectly happy. That was good. But she did not agree about them being a long way off.
The closer the better,
Lulu thought.

“Perhaps you don’t know many animals,” she suggested to Mrs. Holiday.

“Hardly any,” said Mrs. Holiday cheerfully.

Lulu tried to help with that.

She thought of lots of ways.

Mrs. Holiday would not be helped. She said, “No, no, no, absolutely not,” when Lulu offered to organize a pet show for the school summer fair.

“I’m not sure I want to look!” she said when Lulu brought in photographs of the Snail world she had built at the end of her garden. “Snails are just not me, Lulu! In fact, I’m afraid I don’t like them much at all.”

“It’s not just snails,” said Lulu. “Slugs too!”

“Even worse!” cried Mrs. Holiday.

Lulu bought a packet of dog treats, and a few days later her old dog, Sam, cleverly trailed her all the way to school.

Mrs. Holiday was not a bit pleased about that. Lulu was allowed to give him a drink of water, but after his drink Sam had to go to the janitor’s room and be tied up until the end of the school day.

“Can’t he stay with me?” begged Lulu.

“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Holiday.

“He would be so good! You wouldn’t even notice him!”

“I am noticing him already!” said Mrs. Holiday, glaring icy-blue glares at Sam, who was panting around the classroom, banging into things.

“He’s a very nice dog,” said Lulu pleadingly. “Look how friendly he is!”