-1- No GoodBunny and Clyde were tired of being good.
Every day Maw-Maw kissed Bunny and said, “Be good.” So Bunny was.
Every day Paw-Paw hugged Clyde and said, “Mind your manners.” So Clyde did.
Every day at school, their teacher told them, “Raise your hands! Follow directions! Use inside voices!” So they did.
But Bunny and Clyde were tired of making their beds. They were tired of saying please and thank you. They were tired of keeping burps to themselves.
They were done playing nice. They were done being told what to do.
One morning on their way down the sidewalk, Bunny spotted a bubble gum comic. She picked it up. Clyde spotted an old bottle cap. He picked it up. Along came Old Lady Murphy. She patted each of them on the head and said, “What a pair of good little bunnies!”
Bunny hated being patted on the head. Clyde hated being called a good little bunny. He was a chipmunk!
“She thinks we’re picking up trash,” said Clyde.
“She doesn’t even know we’re treasure hunting,” said Bunny.
And so on that one perfect Minnesota morning, Bunny said to Clyde, “Let’s be bad for once!”
“Bad to the bone,” said Clyde.
There was only one problem. Up to now, Bunny and Clyde had always been good. The two goodniks did not have the first clue how to be bad.
But they did know one thing. When a baffled bunny was looking to learn something, when a curious chipmunk needed information, there was only one place to go.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Bunny.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Clyde.
“To the library!” said Bunny and Clyde at the same time.
-2- Bad Books Bunny and Clyde grabbed their library cards and the i ª reading tote. They hopped on their shiny red tandem bike and pedaled to the library. Racing up the steps and through the big glass door, they found their friend Rowena working at the front desk.
“Rowena!” said Bunny, sidling up to the counter. “Do you have any, um, bad books?”
Rowena was loading books onto a cart. “As a famous writer once said, ‘Life is too short for bad books.’ I like to think that the library is full of
good books.”
“Just point us to the bad section,” said Bunny. She almost added
please but caught herself just in time.
“Yeah, there must be books with bad stuff somewhere in this joint,” said Clyde.
Rowena looked stumped. And someone who works in a library is almost never stumped.
She hemmed and hawed and hawed and hemmed and scratched her head with her wing. “Aha!” she said at last. “Follow me.”
Rowena led them through the stacks to a row marked 500. “Try the 551s.”
As soon as Rowena left, Bunny and Clyde pawed through the books on the shelves. Volcanoes! Earthquakes! Hurricanes! Tornadoes!
“Bad, bad, bad, and bad,” said Bunny.
“But not the kind of bad we’re looking for,” said Clyde.
They were about to give up when Clyde noticed mountains of picture books scattered all over the floor of the library’s Young Readers room.
“What a mess!” said Clyde.
“These books should be lined up on the shelves,” said Bunny. “Spine out!”
“Maybe there are bad books somewhere in this mess,” said Clyde.
Bunny hunted through heaps and heaps of books. Clyde pored over piles and piles of books. “All these books have
good and
love and
hugs in the titles.”
“All these books have pink unicorns and sparkly rainbows,” said Bunny.
Bunny and Clyde dug to the bottom of the biggest pile. At last!
They took their haul up to the front counter. “Wow!” said Rowena. “You two are my best readers. Let’s see what we have here.”
Rowena clucked as she checked out their books. “Hmm. Interesting choices. Some bunny’s up to some hijinks,” she said with a twinkle.
Bunny flushed pink all the way to the tips of her ears. A shifty-eyed Clyde shuffled his feet.
Bunny hurried to hide the loot in the i ª reading tote. Clyde plunked down five pennies for a bookmark.
Rowena picked up a penny and studied the back of it. “Hey! This is a whole-wheat penny. These are rare, like a hundred years old. I bet it’s worth a pretty penny!”
Bunny and Clyde were only half-listening.
“This is going in my piggy bank at home. You’re welcome to come see it anytime. It’s almost full, but I’m sure I can squeeze in one more.” She pulled a penny from her pocket to replace it.
“Happy reading!” she called, but Bunny and Clyde were already out the door, on their way to being bad.
Copyright © 2024 by Megan McDonald; illustrated by Scott Nash. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
