Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake Read online

  I gave the cake lady my ticket.

  “Guess what?” I said. “This is my last chance to win a prize. Except for I won a comb. And also I got to throw a sponge at a kid I hate. Plus I jumped till sweat came on my head. But then I couldn’t find my shoe named leather. And so that’s how come I have a sock foot.”

  The lady looked funny at me. “Yes, well, uh, good luck to you,” she said.

  “Good luck to you, too,” I said back.

  Then I skipped very fast to the squares with the numbers on them.

  “OKAY! READY ANYTIME YOU ARE!” I yelled.

  But the cake lady kept on waiting and waiting for other kids to come.

  It took a very long time. That’s how come I got ants in my pants.

  I did huffing and puffing.

  Then I folded my arms.

  And I tapped my foot very fast.

  “HEY, I’M NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER OVER HERE,” I shouted.

  Finally, the cake lady clapped her hands.

  “Boys and girls. I’m going to start the music now. And I would like you to march in an orderly circle. But remember, as soon as the music stops, you stop too.”

  After that, she turned the music way loud.

  I did my bestest marching. My feet were very bouncing. And my knees went way high in the air.

  Then all of a sudden—just like before—the music stopped. And all the children stopped, too.

  The cake lady reached into her hat.

  “Number three!” she hollered out.

  I looked down at my square.

  “HEY! IT’S ME! IT’S ME! LOOK! I’M STANDING ON THE NUMBER THREE! AND SO I’M THE WINNER, I THINK!”

  Mother clapped her hands.

  “It is you! You are the winner!” she yelled.

  She had relief on her face.

  “Go pick out a cake! Any cake you want!” she said.

  I zoomed to the cake table and looked at all the yummy flavors.

  There was chocolate. And orange. And lemon. And white. And coconutty. And cupcakes. And doughnuts. And brownies.

  Also, there was a secret cake wrapped in shiny aluminum foil!

  “What kind is that one?” I asked.

  The cake lady wrinkled her nose. “Oh, I don’t think you want that one. That one is a fruitcake,” she said.

  I smiled real big.

  “Yea!” I hollered. “Yea for the delicious fruitcake! ’Cause fruit is the bestest thing I love. And so that’s the one I pick!”

  Mother shook her head. “No, Junie B. It’s not the kind of fruit you think it is. You’re not going to like it.”

  I stopped smiling.

  “Yeah, only that is not fair and square of you. ’Cause you said I could pick any cake I wanted. And now I pick the fruitcake. And you say I can’t have it.”

  Mother rolled her eyes up at the ceiling.

  “Fine. Take the fruitcake,” she grouched.

  She lifted it off the table for me.

  “NO! ME! ME! I WANT TO CARRY IT!” I hollered.

  “It’s very heavy,” said Mother.

  “Yeah, only that’s how come I have muscley muscles in my arms,” I explained.

  I bended my arm to show her. “See? See my muscle bump? That’s how strong I am.”

  Finally, Mother put the cake in my arms.

  It dropped on the floor.

  “Whoa!” I said. “That is the strongest fruit I ever felt!”

  “Now do you want me to carry it?” Mother asked.

  “No,” I said. “’Cause I just got a great idea in my head!”

  Then I put my heavy cake of fruit down on the floor.

  And I dragged it right out of Room Nine!

  8/The Most Usefulest Cake I Love

  I dragged my fruitcake down the hall. Mother walked behind me. Her cheeks were very sucked into her head.

  “Want to drag it? Want to drag my cake of fruit?” I asked her.

  Mother said the word I’ll pass.

  That’s how come I dragged my fruitcake to the Moon Walk Tent. All by myself.

  And guess what?

  Daddy was waiting with my other shoe! It had gotten stuck under that big tent. And we didn’t even see it there!

  I put it on my foot. “Hurray!” I said. “Now everything is happily ever after. ’Cause I have my shoes named pat-and-leather. And also I have a delicious cake of fruit! See it, Daddy? See the cake I won!”

  Daddy looked at my cake in shiny aluminum.

  Then he looked at Mother.

  He shook his head very slow. “No,” he said. “Don’t tell me.”

  Mother rocked back and forth on her feet.

  “Yupper,” she said.

  Daddy closed his eyes. “You mean she picked…”

  “A fruitcake,” said Mother.

  I jumped way high in the air again. “Yea! Yea! A fruitcake! I picked a fruitcake! And now I would like to see what it looks like. Only I can’t even lift this big guy off the ground.”

  Daddy picked it up and set it on the table.

  I pulled off the aluminum foil.

  Then I just stared and stared at that thing.

  It was brownish and slickish. And there was slippery shine on the top.

  “It got rotted,” I said very quiet.

  Mother smiled a little bit. “It’s not rotten, Junie B.,” she said, “That’s just the way fruitcakes look.”

  I looked closer at it. “Yeah, only I don’t even see any fruits on this gunky thing.”

  Daddy pinched off a little piece for me to look at. He showed me some hard green things. And some hard yellow things. And some hard red things. He said those were the fruits.

  I put my tongue on a green one.

  “Yuck!” I said. “Bluck!”

  Just then I heard a voice.

  “JUNIE B.! JUNIE B.! LOOK WHAT I WON AT THE CAKE WALK!”

  I turned around.

  It was my bestest friend, Lucille. She was running at me with a box of fluffy white cupcakes. They had beautiful rainbow sprinkles on them.

  “See them, Junie B.? See how delicious they look?” said Lucille.

  “Yeah? So?” I said.

  Lucille looked on the table where my cake was.

  “What’s that?” she asked. “Did you win a cake, too? Can I see it, please?”

  I jumped in front of it.

  “No. You cannot,” I said.

  Only Lucille stood on her tippy-toes. And she peeked right around my shoulder.

  She made a sick face. “Ick,” she said. “What happened to it?”

  “Nothing happened to it, that’s what,” I said back.

  I quick put the aluminum foil on it again.

  Then I climbed up on the table bench. And I pumped up my muscles. And I lifted my fruitcake way high in the air.

  “This could kill you if I dropped it on your head, Lucille,” I said very straining.

  Lucille ran to her nanna speedy quick.

  After that, I got down from the bench. And I dragged my cake of fruit all the way to my car.

  Daddy unlocked the door for me.

  “Get in. And I’ll set your fruitcake on your lap,” he told me.

  “Yeah, only that thing will squish my legs into flatties,” I said.

  And so Daddy put my fruitcake on the seat beside me.

  I climbed on top of it and buckled up my seat belt.

  “Hey. I can see out the window when I sit on this thing. And it doesn’t even smush down,” I said.

  Daddy made a rhyme. “Fruitcake. The seat you can eat,” he said.

  “Yeah, only I never even want to taste this yucky blucky thing again,” I told him.

  Mother smiled. “But that’s the great thing about fruitcake, Junie B.,” she said. “You never actually have to eat it. Because it never goes bad.”

  “Fruitcake has been known to last for years,” said Daddy. “And if you ever get tired of it, you just put a bow on it. And you give it to someone you hate for Christmas.”

  Then him
and Mother laughed and laughed. Only I didn’t even get that joke.

  Pretty soon, Daddy drove the car into our driveway.

  I carried my fruitcake into the house.

  Except for just then, it started to slip out of my arms. And so I quick plopped it in my kitchen chair.

  I climbed on top of it again.

  “Hey! Look how big I am! I’m all the way raised up to the table. And this fruitcake doesn’t even hurt my behiney!”

  I smiled very happy.

  “This is the most usefulest cake I ever heard of!” I said.

  After that, Daddy carried my fruitcake into my room for me.

  He put it on my shelf.

  Then him and Mother tucked me into bed.

  I waited for their feet to walk away.

  Then I took my flashlight from under my pillow. And I shined it on my fruitcake.

  The aluminum foil sparkled in the dark. It was the most beautiful sight I ever saw.

  I smiled some more.

  ’Cause I am a lucky duck to win that special thing.

  And also, I appreciate my comb.

  Laugh out loud with Junie B. Jones!

  #1 Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus

  #2 Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business

  #3 Junie B. Jones and Her Big Fat Mouth

  #4 Junie B. Jones and Some Sneaky Peeky Spying

  #5 Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake

  #6 Junie B. Jones and That Meanie Jim’s Birthday

  #7 Junie B. Jones Loves Handsome Warren

  #8 Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed

  #9 Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook

  #10 Junie B. Jones Is a Party Animal

  #11 Junie B. Jones Is a Beauty Shop Guy

  #12 Junie B. Jones Smells Something Fishy

  #13 Junie B. Jones Is (almost) a Flower Girl

  #14 Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentime

  #15 Junie B. Jones Has a Peep in Her Pocket

  #16 Junie B. Jones Is Captain Field Day

  #17 Junie B. Jones Is a Graduation Girl

  #18 Junie B., First Grader (at last!)

  #19 Junie B., First Grader: Boss of Lunch

  #20 Junie B., First Grader: Toothless Wonder

  #21 Junie B., First Grader: Cheater Pants

  #22 Junie B., First Grader: One-Man Band

  #23 Junie B., First Grader: Shipwrecked

  #24 Junie B., First Grader: BOO…and I MEAN It!

  #25 Junie B., First Grader: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! (P.S. So Does May.)

  #26 Junie B., First Grader: Aloha-ha-ha!

  #27 Junie B., First Grader: Dumb Bunny

  Top-Secret Personal Beeswax: A Journal by Junie B. (and me!)

  Junie B.’s Essential Survival Guide to School

  Barbara Park says:

  “For some reason, our family always had bad luck at school carnivals. The year my son David won the Cake Walk, there was only one cake left and it tasted like cardboard. The next year, someone stole my son Steve’s new shoes while he was leaping around inside the Moon Walk Tent.

  Little did I know that all of these disasters would come in handy when Junie B. Jones went to her own school carnival. In fact, with a little imagination, I found I could make Junie B.’s carnival experience even worse than our own!

  Or at least I tried.

  Leave it to Junie B. Jones to find the bright side of a fruitcake!”

  Text copyright © 1995 by Barbara Park

  Illustrations copyright © 1995 by Denise Brunkus

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Park, Barbara. Junie B. Jones and the yucky blucky fruitcake / by Barbara Park; illustrated by Denise Brunkus.

  p. cm. “A first stepping stone book.”

  SUMMARY: Junie, a spunky, sometimes exasperating, kindergartner, looks forward to winning lots of prizes at the school carnival, but a fruitcake was not exactly what she had in mind.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-75485-1

  [1. Kindergarten—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Carnivals—Fiction. 4. Behavior—Fiction.] I. Brunkus, Denise, ill. II. Title. PZ7.P2197Jtu 1995 [Fic]—dc20 94-40891

  Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland

  v3.0