Road Trip with Max and His Mom Read online

  Contents

  *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Frontispiece

  Dedication

  Part One: The Announcement

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Two: The Journey

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Three: Feats Accomplished and Discoveries Made

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Sample Chapter from WEEKENDS WITH MAX AND HIS DAD

  Buy the Book

  Coming Soon!

  Middle Grade Mania!

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH on Social Media

  Text copyright © 2018 by Linda Urban

  Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Katie Kath

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  hmhco.com

  Cover illustration © 2018 by Katie Kath

  Cover design by Christine Kettner and Andrea Miller

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-544-80912-3

  eISBN 978-1-328-47666-1

  v1.0318

  For Jeannette

  Chapter

  One

  On Monday morning after breakfast, Mom made an announcement. “We are going on an adventure.”

  Max was surprised. Mom was not the sort of mom who made announcements about adventures. She was the sort of mom who made announcements about the laundry needing to be put away, or how proud she was of Max’s report card, or that Max’s hair was getting long and it was time for a trim.

  “An adventure to the barbershop?” asked Max.

  “A real adventure.” Mom handed Max a card that said:

  BIRTHDAY PARTY AND FAMILY REUNION

  Beneath the words was a photo of a very, very old woman wearing a very, very old cowboy hat.

  “Your Great-Great-Aunt Victory is turning one hundred years old.”

  Max was surprised at this, too. “I have a Great-Great-Aunt Victory?”

  “You’ve met her before,” said Mom. “When you were three.”

  Max looked closely at the photo. He did not remember meeting any very, very old women in cowboy hats.

  “You sat in her lap and sang the alphabet song into a soup spoon. It was adorable.” Mom said “adorable” in a way that made Max feel like he was still only three years old instead of nine. “My uncles called you Spooner after that. You really don’t remember?”

  Max was glad he did not remember. Who wanted to remember being called Spooner?

  Mom tapped the invitation. “Read the inside,” she said.

  VICTORY IS TURNING 100

  Join us at her favorite spot in the world,

  Bronco Burt’s Wild Ride Amusement Park,

  for a day of ropin’, ridin’, and reminiscin’!

  “Have I been to Bronco Burt’s before too?” asked Max.

  “No,” said Mom. “But I went dozens of times when I was growing up in Pennsylvania.”

  Max had seen Pennsylvania on the map in Mrs. Maloof’s classroom. It didn’t even touch Michigan. There was a whole Ohio between. “Pennsylvania is pretty far away.”

  “That is the best part,” said Mom. “You and I are going on a road trip!”

  Wow! A birthday party, an amusement park, and a road trip? This did sound like an adventure! “Will I get to miss school?” asked Max.

  “The party is on Saturday. We’ll drive to Pennsylvania after school on Friday and come back on Sunday night. You won’t miss a thing,” said Mom.

  “Oh,” said Max.

  Mom laughed. “You look disappointed. Guess you really wanted to miss some school, huh?”

  Max shook his head. He wouldn’t have minded missing a little school, but that was not why he was disappointed. “I’d like to go with you, but I can’t.”

  “You can’t?” asked Mom. “Why not?”

  Max got quieter. He did not want Mom to feel bad about her mistake, especially when she sounded so happy. “You work at Shady Acres on the weekends and I go to Dad’s, remember?” The schedule was right there on the family calendar, in Mom’s no-budge, no-smudge ink. “You only get me on the weekdays.”

  “That’s usually true. But your Great-Great-Aunt Victory will turn one hundred only once. I’ve talked to your dad and he said if you want to go to the party, you should go. You do want to go, don’t you?”

  Max did want to go, but he wished he didn’t have to leave Dad alone on the weekend. Ever since Dad had gotten his apartment, he and Max had spent the weekends together. They ate pizza and watched movies and walked Ms. Tibbet’s basset hounds and had breakfast at Ace’s Coffee Shop every morning. What would Dad do without Max to keep him company?

  “Oh, Max, you’re going to love it,” Mom continued. “Bronco Burt’s has rides and barbecue stands and a Wild West arcade and …” Her face turned dreamy, like it did when she took a bite of her favorite Mocha Monkey Ice Cream. “… the Big Buckaroo.”

  The Big Buckaroo? Who was the Big Buckaroo?

  He sounded to Max like some kind of movie-star guy. Since when did Mom care about movie-star guys?

  “I have to get to the bus stop,” said Max.

  Mom looked at the clock. “We still have a few minutes. Don’t you want to talk more about our trip?”

  “I don’t want to be late.” Max grabbed his backpack. He ran all the way to his bus stop. And then, because he was early, he ran down the block and back as many times as he could before the bus came.

  Chapter

  Two

  When Max got to school, he told his best friend, Warren, about Mom’s road-trip plans. “Cool!” said Warren. “But who is the Big Buckaroo?”

  “That’s my question too!” This was one reason Max and Warren were such good friends. They ate the same things and they liked to do the same things and most of the time they had the same questions about things too. “I think he is a movie-star guy,” said Max.

  “Maybe Mrs. Maloof has a biography about him,” said Warren.

  May was Biography Month in Mrs. Maloof’s third grade, and the whole class had gone biography crazy. People were keeping lists of the books they had read and marking their favorites with smiley faces. In the beginning, every biography Max read had a smiley face beside it. Then he found The Spine-Tingling Book of Awesome Explorers and Daring Discoveries and erased all the other smileys.

  The Spine-Tingling Book had seven biographies of seven awesome explorers. It had maps and charts and drawings and photos, plus long lists of Feats Accomplished and Discoveries Made. Max had read the whole book five times. Every time, he added another smiley face, and every time, his spine actually did tingle. When he thought about the Big Buckaroo, his spine didn’t even twitch.

  “Movie stars shouldn’t get biographies,” said Max. “Biographies are for people who do stuff. Movie stars just pretend to do stuff.”

  Max’s classmate Glenn was standing nearby, eavesdropping like always. “Actors do stuff,” said Glenn. “My mom’s cousin was in a toothpaste commercial. She had to brush her teeth for six hours straight.”

  “Brushing your teeth for a commercial is different than brushing your teeth for real,�
�� said Max.

  “It’s still doing something,” said Glenn.

  Max wanted to say that it was not—not really—but just then, Mrs. Maloof rang the Quiet Chime.

  “Third-graders,” said Mrs. Maloof, “I have an announcement.”

  Two announcements in one day? Max could hardly believe it.

  Mrs. Maloof’s announcements were more unpredictable than Mom’s. Sometimes they were about good things, like early-dismissal snow days, and sometimes they were about not-so-good things, like surprise geography quizzes or how Principal Adelle thought the noise level in the hallway was uncivilized. Max waited to see which kind of announcement this was before he got too excited.

  “Biography Month has been a great success,” began Mrs. Maloof. “I propose a celebration.”

  “Woo-hoo!” said Warren.

  “Woo-hoo!” said Max. This was an exciting announcement. Celebrations in Mrs. Maloof’s class meant watching movies and eating popcorn. Sometimes, there was extra recess.

  “A special celebration,” continued Mrs. Maloof. “An Inspiration Celebration.”

  “Will there be popcorn?” asked Max.

  “I suppose we could have popcorn—but an Inspiration Celebration is different from the other celebrations we’ve had this year. Instead of our class watching a movie, we will be inviting guests to our classroom to watch all of you.”

  Max looked at Warren. Warren looked at Max. Maybe this wasn’t such an exciting announcement after all.

  “Each of you will give a speech about the most inspiring story you read during Biography Month.”

  Giving a speech about The Spine-Tingling Book of Awesome Explorers and Daring Discoveries was not quite as exciting as extra recess, but it was still pretty great. Max could tell about the maps and the photos. He could share about Feats Accomplished and Discoveries Made. He could mention all the ways that explorers were better than movie stars.

  “Let’s spend some time thinking about our speeches in our writer’s notebooks,” said Mrs. Maloof.

  Max opened his notebook as fast as he could. At the top of the page, he wrote THE SPINE-TINGLING BOOK OF AWESOME EXPLORERS AND DARING DISCOVERIES in tall, blocky letters. His brain spun with spine-tingling thoughts. How was he going to get everything into one little speech?

  While he thought, Max traced the letters on his notebook page. He liked how the A in AWESOME looked like a mountain peak. Max drew a patch of snow at the top and a tiny explorer climbing up the side. Then he made a scuba lady swim through one of the O’s in BOOK. A sailing ship threatened to crash into the T in THE. “Look out, Magellan!” Max shouted in his head. He imagined a miniature Ferdinand Magellan ordering his crew to let down the sails and steer away from the dangerous rocky title. “Follow us!” hollered Sacagawea. “We know a shortcut!”

  Max was having so much fun drawing, he almost forgot he was still in Mrs. Maloof’s classroom. His spine tingled. His toes tapped.

  “Are you writing about a dancer?” said Glenn, looking at Max’s tapping feet.

  “I am writing about awesome explorers,” said Max, even though it wasn’t any of Glenn’s business.

  “Which one?” said Glenn.

  “Not just one,” said Max. “Seven.”

  “You can’t do seven.” Glenn pointed to the instructions Mrs. Maloof had written on the board. “It says choose a biography. A means one.”

  Max’s toes stopped tapping.

  “A” did mean one.

  Max looked at his drawings. He imagined all the tiny explorers looking back at him, hoping to be picked.

  The tingling in Max’s spine drained into his stomach and lumped there like cold oatmeal. How was he going to choose?

  Chapter

  Three

  Max thought about his explorers all afternoon. Even when he was supposed to be adding fractions. Even when he was supposed to be singing the Erie Canal song. Even during recess.

  On the bus ride home, he opened The Spine-Tingling Book and looked at the pictures. Some of the explorers had photographs. Some of them lived in before-camera days, so there were only drawings. It didn’t matter to Max. He loved looking at the pictures and imagining what the explorers were thinking. Usually, he imagined them saying something funny, like Fanny Workman saying, “You think climbing mountains is hard? Try doing it in a dress!” Or Sacagawea wishing her husband wasn’t such a showoff. Or Ernest Shackleton thinking, “Seal stew for lunch again?” But today, the explorers only seemed to say, “Pick me! Pick me!”

  All of the Awesome Explorers were awesome. All of them deserved speeches.

  How could he choose?

  Max was still thinking about explorers when he got home from school, but when he walked into the kitchen, he stopped. Mom’s always-tidy kitchen table was covered in papers and markers and craft supplies.

  “Hooray! You’re home!” said Mom. She looked almost as excited as she had when she told Max about her road-trip plans.

  “Do you have another announcement?” asked Max.

  “I have something fun for us to do. My cousin Merit is putting together a family album as a gift for Great-Great-Aunt Victory. He sent us each a scrapbook page to decorate. I thought we could have a crafting afternoon!”

  Max and Mom used to have lots of crafting afternoons. They had made spiders out of egg cartons and turtles out of walnut shells and once they even built a huge Bubble Wrap fort for Max’s Stevicus action figure. When Mom started working at Shady Acres and taking nursing classes at the college, she had less time for crafting. The only thing he and Mom had made this year was a clay porcupine for his Michigan Mammal project at school. A crafting afternoon did sound like fun.

  Mom handed Max a scrapbook page. It was thick and square and very, very blank.

  “Cousin Merit asked each of us to make a page about who we are and what we’ve done.”

  “Like Feats Accomplished and Discoveries Made,” said Max.

  “Cousin Merit suggested sharing hobbies and favorite snack foods, but feats and discoveries sound good too,” said Mom.

  Max sat down at the kitchen table. He grabbed a handful of markers. In his best printing, he wrote MAX LeROY on his scrapbook page.

  When Max looked up, he saw that Mom had turned on her laptop and that his face was all over the screen. She had opened a file called MAX PIX, and in it were hundreds of photos. Max at his basketball games. Max in a Frankenstein costume. Max splashing at Stony Creek with Warren. There were pictures of holidays and birthdays and picnics and parades. There were even a few pictures of him and Dad in their sneaky spy disguises.

  Mom showed Max how to print the pictures he wanted to add to his page. When they came out of the printer, he trimmed the edges and glued the backs and pressed them onto the thick white scrapbook paper.

  Max imagined uncles and aunts and cousins gathering around to see his page. He wondered if they would look at the photos and know what he had been thinking. Just in case, he drew thought balloons coming out of each picture.

  “Watch this layup!” said Basketball Max.

  “Hope there aren’t any sharks around,” said At-the-Beach Max.

  “Uhhhhhnnnnnnn …” moaned Frankenstein Max.

  “Is being Frankenstein a feat or a discovery?” asked Mom.

  “Both,” said Max. “Because I discovered that it is hard to walk in Frankenstein shoes—”

  “But you did it anyway,” said Mom.

  “Yes,” said Max. “With my feet. Get it? Feet? Feat?”

  Mom laughed and shook her head, which made Max’s spine tingle. He loved making Mom laugh.

  “Is your page all finished?” asked Mom.

  “Not yet.” He had pasted a spy picture of himself with Dad in one corner of the page, but there was still something missing.

  “I don’t have any pictures of me and you,” said Max.

  “You don’t?” Mom and Max scrolled through the MAX PIX file. There were plenty of pictures of Mom with Max when he was a baby, but the older Max got, th
e fewer pictures of Mom there were. And there were none from the past year. None at all.

  “I guess my Discovery Made is that I’m always behind the camera these days instead of in front of it.” Mom shrugged in a way that was part That’s okay and part not.

  That gave Max an idea.

  Chapter

  Four

  Max ran to his room and brought back the camera that he and Dad had used to take sneaky spy photos. He put his face next to Mom’s and looked straight at the lens. Snap!

  A picture of Max and Mom appeared on the screen. “Perfect,” said Max.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mom. She smoothed her sproingy hair and ran her fingers through Max’s curls. “Can we try one more?”

  Max took another photo. Snap!

  “Much better,” said Mom. “Thanks, pal.” Mom kissed Max on the cheek, and Max took another photo. Snap! This one made Mom laugh. Snap! Snap! Snap!

  They took serious pictures and silly pictures and pictures with glitter glue on their fingers. They went outside and took a picture in front of the house and one by the apple tree they had planted in the backyard and one with their neighbor Mr. Yamamoto and his chameleon, Angus.

  When they came back inside, Mom downloaded the photos into the computer and Max scrolled through them. All of the photos were great. But choosing the one he wanted for his scrapbook page was easy.

  “Really?” said Mom. “You picked the one where you made me laugh?”

  “It is the best feat I accomplished all day,” said Max.

  Crafting afternoon had been so much fun that Max had forgotten all about his explorers. He did not think about them when he and Mom made room at the table so they could eat their lasagna, or when he helped Mom wash the dishes or when Mom scrolled through all the new photos in the MAX PIX file.

  “I like this one,” said Mom. “You look so handsome—like a movie star.”