Read Online The Mighty Quinn by Robyn Parnell - Free Book Online Page B

aware of.”
    â€œAdults think they know everything,” Neally huffed.
    â€œYour Three Musketeers are a great group of kids. That should be common knowledge,” Mr. Standers said.
    â€œI know Arturo, a little bit. He understands way more English than he speaks. He said he’d teach me to say ...” Quinn felt his face heat up. “He said he’d teach me, uh, some names for someone who acts like a jerk.” Quinn covered his eyes and giggled.
    â€œBusted!” Neally exclaimed. “Arturo’s going to teach you dirty words in Spanish!”
    â€œNo!” Quinn protested. “Not dirty. Just colorful and ... descriptive.”
    â€œYoung man, do you have enough ‘colorful’ words for the entire class?” Neally spoke like a substitute teacher with a head cold.
    Quinn decided a change in subject was called for. “I’m not sure about Janos. He seems happy enough, but I don’t think he’s learning a lot. About all he ever says is, ‘Duh.’”
    â€œThat’s ‘da.’” Mr. Standers chuckled. “It means ‘yes’ in his native language, which is a Ukrainian dialect, similar to Russian.”
    â€œJanos has the biggest teeth I’ve ever seen,” Quinn said.
    â€œBig, how?” Neally asked. “Big as in their width, orlength? Or quantity?” Neally looked thoughtfully at her father. “How many teeth do people usually have, at our age? We could look it up, in one of Mom’s medical books.”
    â€œNo, Janos’ teeth are just big,” Quinn said. “You should check ’em out.”
    â€œI’ll make a note of it,” Mr. Standers said. “And yes—or ‘da’—it’s true that of the Three Musketeers, Janos is having the hardest time learning English. There aren’t many resources in this area for foreign languages other than Spanish. Still, he understands more than you might think. And for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why Lily was in the group ...”
    â€œMe too,” said Quinn.
    â€œMe three,” added Neally.
    â€œUntil Ms. Blakeman explained it to me. It’s not that Lily doesn’t speak English. After my first fifteen minutes with the ESL group I could see that her grammar is better than half the kids in your class. She’s in the group to get extra help, mainly to work on her pronunciation. Did you know that Lily can speak at least a little bit of five languages? Some Afrikaans, German, French, a Bantu dialect, and English. It’s not uncommon for people to speak three or more languages in Namibia, which is where she’s from.” Mr. Standers ran his fingers around his teacup. “I’d bet there’s some interesting stories with Lily’s and Janos’ families.”
    â€œTay knew you were talking to Ms. Blakeman about the service project during recess,” Neally said to her father. “He said that all the dumb projects get passed off to the volunteers. How is that going to work anyway?”
    Quinn answered, “Every year all the classes do one and vote for a winner. It’s going to be even bigger this year. There’s a trophy, and a committee of adults votes for the winner, instead of just the students.”
    â€œYou’re interested in that project, aren’t you?”
    Quinn felt his face flush under Mr. Standers’ attentive gaze. “I guess,” he mumbled, slumping in his chair.
    â€œYour friend Tay is partly right, Neally, but it′s not dumb. In fact, it sounds interesting and worthwhile to me.”
    â€œMe too.” Quinn straightened up. Looking into Mr. Standers’ eyes was like sinking into the cushions of a comfy couch. Somehow, Neally’s dad understood that the project was important to Quinn. No one else cared about the community service project because it was the one project for which there was no pizza party given to the winners. There