The Giggling Girls by Brianna Abrego

Read  the following story.  Based on what you know about urban legends, does this qualify as an urban legend?  Why or why not?

It was cloudy and spooky that day. Dried leaves lay all over the streets and lawns. You could see the moon approaching from behind the dead dry trees.

"The Woodrow house" Maggie Parker said in her best scary voice. Her and her friends Allison Sampson and Anna Anderson were standing outside the house, looking at it from the empty sidewalk. It gave them chills just looking at it. Full of dust. Deserted. No sign of life coming from inside it.
Seeing that her scary voice didn't scare her friends, she tried something different.

"You know, as the story goes, a family moved there. A happy family.  Happy just like the Brady Bunch. The Woodrow twins were part of the family. Aly and Carly Woodrow loved running around in the house because of how big it is.  But something happened.  When they were walking in the house one day, on a full moon, they fell ... right into the furnace in the basement.  The floor had snapped from under them ... SNAP!!!! They were burned and cut up to death.  Aly was holding a doll when she died,  Carly was holding her stuffed bear. Their parents found them, dead. But right when they looked at the kids, burnt and all, the twins eyes shot open .
Their eyes were glowing red.  Like fire.  They got up and grabbed a crowbar from the side of the furnace and killed their parents.  You can still hear their giggles as they skip through the house holding their doll and stuffed bear singing "Ring Around the Rosie."  Legend has it that people keep disappearing when they go in there, like the girls are still there, waiting to kill."  Magggie told them.  Allison's eyes were huge by the time the story was finished, but Anna kept a skeptial look.  She began to walk toward the house, closer and closer until they realized ...realized that she was walking towards the door.  They chased after her.
"Anna, what the heck are doing?!" Allison screamed.
"Al , I'm not buying this ! It's not true - none of it is true!" Anna screamed.
"Don't go in there," Maggie told her.
Anna sighed. "I'm just going to look through the door window," she told them .
She walked closer to the door and looked in.  No sign of life. But there was something, a feeling. Like something was in there. Waiting for you.  The door opened by itself and Anna flew in there, the door slamming shut.
"Oh God , it's locked!  Anna , if this is a joke I'll break your teeth," Maggie screamed.  She was both angry and scared.  Both of them looked into the house.  There was no one in there.
SLAM !!!!!! Anna's freaked out face appeared banging on the door window .
" OPEN THE DOOR !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DEAR LORD , OPEN THE DOOR," She screamed banging as hard as she could on the door.
"It's locked ! We can't ," Allison yelled to her.
"Hold on," Maggie screamed.  But Anna's face disappeared.  Maggie looked to her side, Allison had fainted. " Dang it Allison, wake up," she said helping her up . They both ran as fast as they could to the neighbor's house and called the police.
Anna proceded down the hall. She looked in front of her when she heard a sound.  A song.
"Ring around the rosies, a pocket full of possies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down."
Anna's eyes turn wide with fear when she heard another line of the song.
"Burning in the furnace, we stabbed and killed our parents, burning, dead girls, you will die too!"
When she looked forward, she saw two girls. One holding a doll , the other holding a teddy bear. They were burned. Scratched up and burned so much that you could hardly make out the details of their faces. Their eyes were sunken in and glowing red.  FIRE red.
"Ring around the rosies, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down."
Everything went black.  Anna woke up again.  Looking around in panic, she discovered she was in a basement.
The girls were with her. With a crowbar in their hands.
Anna pulled out her asthma inhaler, not knowing what she would do with it, how the heck can you hold off two ghosts with medication   But it was too late.
"She was our best friend . The police and us found her body , scratched up and bloody . Her inhaler in her hand . We had no idea that it would happen . Not like that . We just can't believe it ." Maggie Parker explained. 
"We didn't know that the story was true. We thought it was just any ordinary house. But it's not. Evil lurks in that house. We lost our best friend to evil." Allison Sampson added crying .
They were on a radio show.
Anna Anderson had lived an overall good life.  But only up to the age of sixteen.  No one knows where she is now.  In the house?  Up above?  Down below?
No one knows.

source: http://www.short-stories-help-children.com/the-giggling-girls.html

*typos and grammatical errors are those of the original author

Add this to Your Summer Reading List

Read the following book review.  Does the review make you want to read the book?  Why or why not? What would make the book review more interesting?


How Angel Peterson Got His Name by Gary Paulsen

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. (November 2004)

As a teenage boy growing up. in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, Gary Paulsen--famed author of Hatchet (1986, MacMillan), Soldier's Heart (1998, Delacorte), and many more young adult novels--was never at a loss for ways to entertain himself. At age 13, he sealed himself in a wooden pickle barrel and attempted to shoot the 12-foot waterfall in town.

His problems started when he discovered the barrel wouldn't float but ended when the

barrel fell 12 feet only to land on a sharp boulder and splinter into assorted pieces.  Extreme sports were born. Paulsen and his friends did not have any of the expensive  and fancy gear available from catalogs and high-end stores that teenagers have today,  but they did have a veritable smorgasbord of adventure equipment available for next to nothing at the local army surplus store. Parachutes, rubber rafts, fighter plane target kites, possibly even whole jeeps (disassembled and packed in grease, according to popular legend) could be had cheaply there. Paulsen acknowledges the equipment as the genuine article from the battlefield; he even had a canteen with a bullet hole right through it

Angel Peterson, whose real name is (or was) Carl, got his sobriquet from remarks he made after breaking the land-speed record for snow skiing. Carl and the gang convince a local hot-rodder to pull Carl (about to become Angel) behind his souped-up car until they cruise on past the speed record and into the history and record books. The conditions are perfect on the day they make the attempt, but Carl has a slight equipment breakdown halfway through the run, and when the tow rope entangles the thumbs of his mittens (army surplus mittens, of course), he appears to give a permanent thumbs up to more speed. The boys break the record at 82'k miles per hour, and after they dig Carl out of the snow where he has been embedded, he tells them that he thought he heard the angels singing when he was careening at high speeds and. Paulsen or one

scared beyond belief. From that point on Carl would be known as Angel

of his buddies at one time or another attempted a litany of crazy stunts, including jumping off a water tower with an army surplus parachute (now called "base jumping" in extreme sports), getting airborne on an army surplus fighter plane target kite (hang gliding), skateboarding, bear wrestling, and many others. 

It's hard to say which is funnier, the facts of the stories themselves or the way that Gary  Paulsen tells them. He has a way of putting the reader right there with him so that the sights and sounds come through clearly and loudly. Paulsen looks at adolescence with a large dose of good humor. We can almost see him shaking his head and laughing in disbelief at the insanity of teenage behavior as he dedicated the book to "all boys in their thirteenth year; the miracle is that we live through it" (p. v).

source: http://www.newberry.k12.sc.us/nbhs/literacypage/Middle%20SChool%20Book%20Reviews.pdf

Who Done It?

Solve-it

A solve-it-yourself mini-mystery
Be detective in this 5-minute mystery!

"The Three Ring Murder" by Richard Ciciarelli

Solve-it #354 - May 2011

Previously published Jan. 1999

Sergeant Harold Cash sidestepped the flipping acrobats and knocked at the trailer door marked DIRECTOR. A husky voice bade him enter.

"Mr. Birdie?" Cash asked. "Clyde Birdie? You the man who runs this circus?"
"Yes. How can I help you?"
"I'm investigating the murder of Larry Conroy, your accountant. I understand you found the body."
"Yes. The owner hired him to go over our books. I put him up in the trailer next door and gave him all our books, bills, receipts, the works."
"He didn't work full time for the circus, then?"
"No way. The owner felt circus people couldn't be trusted when it came to money, so he always hired someone with no connection to our way of life."
"How did you come to find the body?"
"Well, while he was working, Conroy would always lock himself in the trailer. Wouldn't open the door to anyone except a person whose accounts he was going over that day. Anyhow, last night when I walked by his trailer, I noticed the door was open. I looked in and found him slumped over his work with a knife in his back."
"I also understand he wasn't quite dead when you found him," Cash said.
"Yes. I saw his fingers twitching. He was mumbling something. I called for help, but he died before anyone could get here."
"Did you manage to hear what he was saying?" Cash asked.
"Yes. I told the other police who were here. Mr. Conroy kept saying 'Joey' over and over. Then he died."
"Joey? That could be the name of his killer. Do you have anyone working for you named Joey?"
"No. And I don't think you understand, Sergeant. Joey is circus talk for a clown. All clowns are called Joey. Mr. Conroy was going over the clowns' expenses recently."
"Clown, huh?" Cash thought a moment. "How many clowns do you have working for you?"
"We're a small traveling circus, Sergeant. Lots of our people do two or three jobs. We have three part-time clowns: Giggles, Happy Boy, and HeeHaw."
Ten minutes later Cash was talking to a tall, thin man who was feeding chunks of meat to caged lions and tigers.
"Yep. When I'm not taking care of the cats, I'm Giggles," the man said.
"You weren't born with the name Giggles," Cash said.
"No, but that's what I go by around here. Now, what would you like to know?"
"How well did you know Larry Conroy, the man hired to audit the circus' books?"
"Didn't know him at all," Giggles said, moving from the lions to the tigers. "The owner hired a different accountant every year. Rubes, the lot of them. Usually we got lectures on cutting back on expenses to help out. This circus is always in financial trouble. Got to compete with tv, computer games, and special effects movies."
"Where were you at about seven o'clock last night?"
"In my trailer putting on my Giggles make-up and costume. We had a show last night, and I was on at eight, right after the high wire act."
Cash tracked down Happy Boy inside a huge tent, leading horses around a ring.
"Conroy?" the part-time clown asked. "Yeh, I met him once. He asked me about some bills I submitted for shoeing my horses and having a vet check their legs."
"Your horses?" Cash asked.
"Well, not mine, really, but I've grown so close to them I think of them as mine. This Conroy guy had obviously never been around circuses. He asked me if those things were absolutely necessary."
"Were they?"
"A horse's legs are its most valuable asset, Sergeant. Especially a performing horse. If I don't take care of them, they'll be hurt and I'll be out of a job."
"Where were you at about seven last night?"
"I had just finished my act, and I was in the stalls, wiping down and combing my horses."
"Your name wouldn't be Joey, would it?"
"No. It's Jake, why?"
"No reason. Could you tell me where I could find HeeHaw?"
"Probably outside tending to the elephants. He loves those big grey beasts about as much as I love my horses."
HeeHaw was a large man who was waving a white baton in front of three elephants. With each movement the pachyderms performed a different trick, first "dancing," then rearing on their hind legs like pet dogs.
"I never met the guy personally," HeeHaw said in answer to Sgt. Cash's question, "but I found a note from him on my trailer door. He wanted to see me today about some bills I submitted."
"Was he specific about what he wanted?
"Something about the cost of feed for the elephants. He thought it was too high."
"Was it?"
"You're as dumb as he was. Do you know how much an elephant eats every day? And I've got three of them here to take care of. And I'll tell you something: I'm not going to starve these beautiful animals just to save a couple of bucks. They not only perform, they do a lot of heavy work around here like putting up the tent supports."
"May I ask where you were last night at about seven?" Cash asked.
"Sure. I do my clowning bit between the horse act and the high wire act. I had just finished and was in my trailer removing my make-up to get ready for the elephant routine that came later."
"Do you know of anyone who would want to see Larry Conroy dead?" Cash asked.
HeeHaw shrugged. "Maybe somebody who had a secret he didn't want uncovered by an audit. Don't ask me for names-- that's about as specific as I can get."
Sergeant Cash headed back to his car, his head spinning from the information he had gathered.
"Got to sort all this out," he told himself. He leaned on the hood of his car and examined his notes from that day.
"Of course," he snapped his fingers. "I know who killed Larry Conroy. Now all I have to do is investigate him a little more thoroughly."

   

Who killed Larry Conroy?  Explain your reasoning using the clues that helped you come to your conclusion.

Clyde Birdie
Giggles
Happy Boy
HeeHaw

No Child Left Behind?

Read the following political cartoon below.  In your interpretation what is the cartoonist trying to say?  Do you agree with the author's opinion?  Why or why not?