Read Online A Year in the Life of a Complete and Total Genius by Stacey Matson - Free Book Online Page A

they interact with other people? Focus on creating a full character sketch, looking at their positive and negative characteristics, as well as their physical traits and personality.
    Due: January 7
    â€¢ • •
    Peer Tutoring Program—Progress Report
    Session: January 4th
    Worked On: Character Sketches
    Ms. W: I dont feel right about shareing my work with Arthur Bean. He may steel it and use it for his own work
    â€”Robbie
    Robbie is overreacting to something he knows nothing about. Perhaps his parents shouldn’t have taken him out of school early to go to Hawaii for Christmas. I believe all the sun has gone to his head. I tried to explain to him (the same way I explained to you) that my work might seem similar on first glance, but that it is much deeper when you look at it. The symbolism is clear to very smart people. However, my explanation fell on deaf ears, and Robbie just spent the hour spitting on my paper. This is a waste of time.
    â€”Arthur Bean

    â€¢ • •
    A Character Sketch of Margaret Bean
    By Arthur Bean
    Her name was Margaret Mary Bean, but she always went by Marg. She hated being called Margaret. Marg Bean loved the ocean. She grew up on the Prairies, but she always wanted to live beside the ocean. She always wore blue and green, and she read lots of books with blue covers or pictures of boats on the covers. She said that she found it soothing to have a blue-covered book, even if it was actually a book about pirates or something.
    Marg’s pants were always too short because her legs were really long. She tried to wear really big shirts to make it seem like her pants were long enough, but it actually just made her pants look even shorter.
    Marg Bean was prettiest when she was watching television or reading a book. This was because her face would relax, and her mouth would be closed and her hands would stop moving. Any other time her face was always really tight, like she was sewing her eyebrows together in her mind. Marg Bean got tired walking almost anywhere, and then she would breathe through her mouth. It made her seem really old, and she kind of looked like she was embarrassed because her face would be beet red.
    Her voice was always louder than someone would expect it to be, and she seemed to be yelling all the time, but she was actually just talking. She was the person in the public library that everyone looked at when she would ask for books at the counter. “DO YOU HAVE ISAAC ASIMOV BOOKS?” she would say, and the librarian would say in a voice even softer than the one he used with everyone else, “Why yes, they are just over in the corner over there.” “ARTHUR, I WILL BE IN THE CORNER. LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR BOOKS.” And everyone would then look to see who she was talking to, and they would raise their eyebrows and judge me, like they didn’t like anyone who knew her.
    Marg Bean always had porridge and coffee for breakfast. Her favorite lunch was egg salad sandwiches, as long as there were no green onions in the egg salad. Curry made her go to the bathroom a lot, and she thought pepper was too spicy. She made perfect roast beef, and always made asparagus to go with it, which is the best vegetable to eat with roast beef. She also made really good spaghetti and meatballs, but she said they were too much work to make all the time, so she only made them a couple of times.
    If Marg Bean were a character in my book, she would be a zombie mom who was the leader of the zombie pack. She has to be a zombie, because she isn’t alive, and vampires are stupid. She would be super strong and have a zombie cat companion who would kill zombie mice. This is because Marg Bean loved cats—even Pickles, who is actually part cat, part demon. She hated mice, but not as much as she hated spiders.
    Dear Arthur,
    Your character sketch is an excellent beginning to our short story unit. You have captured the essence of your mother’s personality