Melanie Martin Goes Dutch The Private Diary of My Almost Bummer Summer With Cecily, Matt the Brat, and Vincent Van Go G

June 15 Bedtime Dear Brand New Diary, I can't believe it! This was the best day EVER! School is out, and I, Melanie Martin, am almost a fifth grader. 5th grade!!! Today at the end-of-fourth-grade party, everybody said my cupcakes were deliciouseven Christopher. Yesterday after we baked, Mom helped me hide them on top of the refrigerator so Dad wouldn't accidentally eat any. Why? Because last time I made cupcakes, Dad gobbled one up without asking permissionand I ended up with twenty cupcakes for twenty-one kids. The next day on the walk to school, I was balancing my cupcake tray and hoping hoping hoping someone would be absent. Trust me. It does not make you feel proud of yourself to be hoping that someone in your class is stuck at home sneezing or barfing. It makes you feel like a bad person. But when you don't have enough cupcakes to go around, everybody except you gets a cupcake, and you have to sit at your desk pretending you didn't want one anyway. I am not that good a person! Anyway, today was perfect. I brought in the right number of cupcakes, the party was fun, and even Miss Sands was in a great mood. Plus, it was a half day, so we got out at 12:00 instead of 3:00! And almost no homework until September!! Yay!! (I wrote "almost" because we have to read "at least one long book" and write "at least a hundred words" about what we learned from it.) The best thing about vacation is that Cecily and I can spend every minute together and have a ton of sleepovers. And not just on weekends! Mom loves summer vacation too. She just started a five hundred-piece puzzle of a painting of sunflowers. She says puzzles are her "summertime relaxation." She also says that the only thing she loves more than teaching is vacationing. She says it's much easier to keep track of two kids than a whole class. I wonder if that's true. After all, one of her kids is Matt the Brat. 4-EVER yours Melanie Martin, Almost Fifth Grader June 22 afternoon on the sofa Dear Diary, Is this going to be a bummer summer? School has been out for only a week, andeven though I would never admit this to anybodyI sort of miss it. I don't mean waking up early or doing homework or Miss Sands. I mean lunch, recess, art, music, P.E., library, and my friends. Cecily hasn't been around at all. She's been with her dad. She sent me a postcard from Washington, D.C. I wish my family would go somewhere. I wish Cecily would come back. At home, it's just me and Matt the Brat. Of all the brothers in the world, I can't believe mine is Matt. When baby boys were being given out, Mom and Dad obviously got in the wrong line. (I think they got into the reptile line.) To be perfectly honest, Matt and I were actually starting to get along this spring. But then he got seriously annoying again. He loves to play games. He has ever since he was two. Maybe even before that. He used to sit in his diaper and play "How big is Maaaaaaatt?" "Sooooooo big!" all day long with a dopey two-tooth smile on his face. Now all he ever wants to do is play Clue Jr. He lives to shout, "Mortimer Mustard hid the bird in the bank!" or "Polly Peacock hid the turtle in the wig shop!" It gets old. Or maybe I'm getting old for junior games. Last night I mumbled to Dad that I was bored. "Bored?!" Dad said with absolutely no sympathy. "I can think of plWeston, Carol is the author of 'Melanie Martin Goes Dutch The Private Diary of My Almost Bummer Summer With Cecily, Matt the Brat, and Vincent Van Go G', published 2002 under ISBN 9780375821950 and ISBN 0375821953.