Fortune's Magic Farm by Suzanne Selfors (rainbow fish read aloud .txt) 📕

Homer looked down at the wide-eyed, freckled face. “Hi, Squeak,” he said, patting his brother’s head. Squeak may have been too young to understand Homer’s dreams, but he was always happy to listen to stories about sunken pirate ships or lost civilizations.

“Get that squirrel off the table,” Mr. Pudding said, also washing his hands at the sink.

Gwendolyn picked up the squirrel by its tail. The stiff body swung back and forth like the arm of a silent metronome. “I don’t see why it’s such a problem.”

“It’s dead, that’s why it’s a problem. I eat on that table so I don’t want dead things lying on it.”

Confrontations between Gwendolyn and Mr. Pudding had become a daily event in the Pudding household, ever since last summer when Gwendolyn had turned fifteen and had gotten all moody. In the same breath she might laugh, then burst into tears, then sink into a brooding silence. She befuddled Homer. But most girls befuddled Homer.

He took his usual seat at the end of the pine plank table, hoping that the argument wouldn’t last too long. He wanted to finish his chores so he could get back to reading his new map. It had arrived yesterday in a cardboard tube from the Map of the Month Club, a Christmas gift from Uncle Drake. Homer had stayed up late studying the map, but as every clever treasure hunter knows, a map can be read a thousand times and still hide secrets. He’d studied an Incan temple map eighty-two times before discovering the hidden passage below the temple’s well. “Excellent job,” his uncle Drake had said. “I would never have found that at your age. You’re a natural born treasure hunter.”

But the new map would have to wait because the morning argument was just gathering steam. Clutching the squirrel, Gwendolyn peered over the table’s edge. It wasn’t that she was short. It was just that she almost always sat slumped real low in her chair, like a melted person, and all anyone saw during meals was the top of her head. “You eat dead things all the time and you eat them on this table so I don’t see the difference.” She glared at her father.

“Now Gwendolyn, if you’re going to talk back to your father, please wait until we’ve finished eating,” Mrs. Pudding said. She stood at the stove stirring the porridge. “Let’s try to have breakfast without so much commotion, like a normal family.”

“And without dead squirrels,” Mr. Pudding added, taking his seat at the head of the table. “Or dead frogs, or dead mice, or dead anything.”

“But I’ve got to practice. If I don’t learn how to make dead animals look like they ain’t dead, then how will I get a job as a Royal Taxidermist at the Museum of Natural History?”

“Gwendolyn said ain’t,” Squeak said, climbing next to Homer. “That’s bad.”

Mr. Pudding shook his head—a slow kind of shake that was heavy with worry. “Royal Taxidermist for the Museum of Natural History. What kind of job is that? Way off in The City, with all that noise and pollution. With all that crime and vagrancy. That’s no place for a Pudding.”

“Uncle Drake moved to The City,” Gwendolyn said, emphasizing her point with a dramatic sweep of the squirrel. “And he’s doing right fine.”

“How do you know?” Mr. Pudding asked with a scowl. “We don’t even know where he lives in The City. All he’s given us is a post office box for an address. And we haven’t heard a word from him since his last visit. Not a letter. Not a postcard. What makes you think he’s doing right fine?”

“No news is good news,” Mrs. Pudding said. She set bowls of porridge in front of Mr. Pudding and Squeak, then set a bowl for Gwendolyn. “Now stop arguing, you two, and eat your breakfast. And put away that squirrel.”

Gwendolyn stomped her foot, then tucked the squirrel under her chair.

As Mr. Pudding stirred his porridge, steam rose from the bowl and danced beneath his chin. “I told him not to go. The City’s no place for a Pudding. That’s what I told him. But he said he had important matters to tend to. Said he had to find out about that pirate, Stinky somebody or other.”

“Rumpold Smeller,” Homer corrected, suddenly interested in the conversation. “Duke Rumpold Smeller of Estonia became a very famous pirate. His treasure has never been found. Uncle Drake wants to be the first person to find it.”

Mr. Pudding groaned. Gwendolyn rolled her eyes.

“Eat your porridge, Homer,” Mrs. Pudding said, setting an overflowing bowl in front of him. Then she planted a smooch on the top of his curly-haired head.

Mr. Pudding motioned to his wife. Though she bent close to him and though he whispered in her ear, everyone at the table could hear. “Why’d you give him so much? Don’t you think he’s getting kind of… chunky?”

She put her hands on her hips. “He’s a growing boy. He needs to eat.” Then she smiled sweetly at Homer.

Now, Mrs. Pudding loved all three of her children equally, like any good mother. But love can be expressed in different ways. For instance, Mrs. Pudding knew that her eldest child had a mind of her own, so she gave Gwendolyn lots of room to be an individual. Mrs. Pudding knew that her youngest child wanted to be helpful, so she gave Squeak lots of encouragement and praise. And Mrs. Pudding knew, and it broke her heart to know, that her middle child was friendless, so she gave Homer extra helpings of food and more kisses than anyone else in the house.

“Growing boy,” Mr. Pudding grumbled. “How’s he ever gonna fit in if he can’t run as fast as the other boys? If all he talks about is treasure hunting? It’s my brother’s fault, filling his head with all that nonsense.”

It’s not nonsense, Homer thought, shoveling porridge into his mouth. So what if he didn’t fit in with the other boys? All they cared