His eyes twinkled. “I grabbed the skeleton, came back through our connecting door, and hid it in Mrs. Waters’s closet. She leaves the key in the lock, so I just locked the door and kept the key.”
“Then you changed your shoes, right?” Josh asked.
Mr. Dillon nodded. “I didn’t realize I’d left a footprint. But when you told me that later, I decided to leave more footprints, and that’s when I borrowed Mrs. Waters’s powder.”
“And I expect it back, please,” she said.
Everyone laughed again.
Mr. Dillon smiled. “Since you three kids were the first to find Mr. Bones, you get to make the announcement over the intercom.”
“What announcement?” Dink asked.
“Why, about the trip, of course! I’ve hired buses to take the entire school to the aquarium,” Mr. Dillon said.
“Everyone is going?” asked Ruth Rose.
“Everyone searched for Mr. Bones, so everyone gets the prize,” said Mr. Dillon.
Suddenly Mr. Bones’s head popped through the connecting door.
“Even me?” the skeleton asked.
A to Z Mysteries
Dear Readers,
When I was growing up in Connecticut, my favorite place to be was in school. I liked my teachers, and I loved learning new things every day When I reached third grade, I attended a small school that had only two classrooms. The principal was also my teacher! She taught me to write in cursive, and she taught me to love reading.
I used to look forward to Monday mornings. My mom would pack me a lunch, and off I’d go. When summer vacation came along, I’d play and read and hike and swim and go to camp, but I’d be thinking about September, when I could go back to school.
A couple of years ago, we had a writing contest, and Andrew Stern was the winner. He wrote a terrific story about scary things happening where Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose go to school. Andrew’s story gave me some new ideas, and that’s how The School Skeleton was born.
I was lucky to be able to visit Andrew in his school in California. The minute I walked into the school, I knew why Andrew was such a good writer. All the kids and teachers seemed so happy to be there! The principal bought pizza for the whole school to celebrate Andrew’s winning the writing contest.
So thank you, Andrew, for your story and for reminding me why I loved school so much—and still do! You can see Andrew’s picture on this page.
Happy reading!
Sincerely,
Collect clues with Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose
in their next exciting adventure,
THE TALKING T. REX
“I don’t believe it!”
Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose ran toward Tyrone the T. rex.
“What happened?” Dink asked.
Jud pointed to the floor inside Tyrone’s belly. The table and carpet had been moved. Where the table had stood was a square hole cut into the flooring. A hinged door was open, and the compartment was empty.
“How much money was there?” Josh asked.
Jud’s face was white. “All the money we’ve made so far,” he said in nearly a whisper. “Almost five thousand dollars.”
A STEPPING STONE BOOK™
Great authors write great books …
for fantastic first reading experiences!
Grades 1-3
Duz Shedd series
by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park
Magic Tree House® series
by Mary Pope Osborne
Marvin Redpost series by Louis Sachar
Clyde Robert Bulla
The Chalk Box Kid
The Paint Brush Kid
White Bird
J. C. Greenburg
#1 Andrew Lost on the Dog
#2 Andrew Lost in the Bathroom
#3 Andrew Lost in the Kitchen
Jackie French Koller
Mole and Shrew Are Two
Mole and Shrew All Year Through
Mole and Shrew Have Jobs to Do
Mole and Shrew Find a Clue
Jerry Spinelli
Tooter Pepperday
Blue Ribbon Blues: A Tooter Tale
Grades 2-4
A to Z Mysteries® series by Ron Roy
The Katie Lynn Cookie Company series
by G. E. Stanley
Adèle Geras
Stephanie Spinner & Jonathan Etra
Aliens for Breakfast
Aliens for Lunch
Aliens for Dinner
Gloria Whelan
Next Spring an Oriole
Silver
Hannah
Night of the Full Moon
Shadow of the Wolf
NONFICTION
Magic Tree House® Research Guides
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Mary Pope Osborne
Grades 3-5
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by Mallory Loehr
#1: Water Wishes
#2: Earth Magic
#3: Wind Spell
#4: Fire Dreams
Spider Kane Mysteries
by Mary Pope Osborne
#1: Spider Kane and the Mystery Under
the May-Apple
#2: Spider Kane and the Mystery at
Jumbo Nightcrawler’s
NONFICTION
Thomas Conklin
The Titanic Sinks!
Elizabeth Cody Kimmel
Balto and the Great Race
Do you love the A to Z Mysteries?
Then check out Ron Roy’s brand-new series
about KC and Marshall in Washington, D.C.!
The Capital Mysteries
#1 Who Cloned the President?
#2 Kidnapped at the Capital
#3 The Skeleton in the Smithsonian
Text copyright © 2003 by Ron Roy
Illustrations copyright © 2003 by John Steven Gurney
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House
Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.randomhouse.com/kids
www.ronroy.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roy, Ron.
The school skeleton / by Ron Roy ; illustrated by John Steven Gurney.
p. cm. — (A to Z mysteries)
SUMMARY: At Green Lawn Elementary, the entire school becomes involved in a mystery when Mr. Bones, the skeleton in the nurse’s office, disappears.
eISBN: 978-0-307-54543-5
[1. Skeleton—Fiction. 2. Lost and found possessions—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. April Fools’ Day—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Gurney, John, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.R8139 Sc 2003 [Fic]—dc21 2002008918
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon and A TO Z MYSTERIES are registered trademarks and A STEPPING STONE BOOK and colophon and the A to Z Mysteries colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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