For goodness sake

For goodness sake (says Ruby)
I know how to spell AND.
You don't have to write it
in fancy writing.

For goodness sake,
I know how to spell A.
It's just one letter.
That's how we spell it at school.

Marie said, "What's that tattoo
and can I have one too?"
and I said,
For goodness sake, no!

It's already ruined.
I washed it and it's blurry.
For goodness sake,
no!

How to act cool

If you want to act cool with me
(says Ruby)
just say OK.

The easiest way to learn
is walking waving your hips.
Watch me. One, two, three.

Everything has to be
waving your hips.
That's part of being cool.

Not spitting on your hand
like they do in Peter Pan:
that's gross.

You can't do acting cool
at gymnastics: you might go wow!
and fall off the bar.

Don't wave your hips
on the trampoline:
just jump the normal way.

Don't act cool
at dog obedience school
'cos you might fall over, especially

if you're walking backwards.
And if you see stray dogs
leave them alone.

I haven't learned all the coolness
from dog people.
I learned it from Marone.

I'll spell that for you.
It's Ethiopian,
so people can't spell it.

And don't walk coolly up the stairs.
Just walk normally.

The fair maiden

Once upon a time
(says Ruby)
there was a fair maiden.

She had to decide
which pair of shoes
to wear to her wedding.

The wedding was a sad funeral
for someone in her future
who had died.

The fair maiden loved her shoes.
Finally she decided
to wear these ones.

They are blue
and they've got a blue flower.
They remind of her mother
who died.

Facts about goblins and zombies

Goblins knock on the door
in disguise (says Ruby). Get them
to take off their clothes.

If they say no,
they're baddies.
To get them destructed,

take off their clothes.
Then call the police.
Then fight them.

(You know this isn't real.
It's just in case,
to save the day.)

If a zombie comes up the toilet
you can whisk off and fight it,
because you know the steps.

Put some Barbie dolls in a row
because zombies hate Barbie dolls.
They're afraid they'll chomp them.

You can also shine a light at zombies.
It injects them
and they die.

There was an old lady

There was an old lady called Taylor
Who wanted to be an abseiler
But her children said, "No!
On your bike you shall go!"
And so she became a Rail Trailer.

Do you feel sorry for me?

I was hurt today
(says Ruby)
with a very bad hurt.

There was blood on my knee
and I banged my chin. See?
Do you feel sorry for me?

We were running too fast.
Lauren got a bleeding nose:
I crashed her with my head.

Ellen squealed Ee! but I just cried.
I have to scoot slowly now
because it hurts my knee.

Do you feel sorry for me?
Do you feel more sorry for Ellie,
or do you feel more sorry for me?

In the olden days

Sue is not a burglar girl
(says Ruby).

Her father was born
in the olden days.

Probably they didn't have
burglars then

but something worse
like pirates

or deadly weapons aliens.
Deadly means

really good
and not useless.

You're tired

You're tired
(says Elsie)
so it's good we're playing

something entiring
and something
not entiring.

I tell you what to do:
make some dolls' clothes.
That's entiring.

And then I go home
and you have a wee rest
when I'm not here.

You want to breathe

You sometimes feel like breathing
but it's best not to
(says Ruby).

Once you start breathing,
you have to keep going
and your throat just gets sore.

If that happens, there are two things
you can do. The first thing is,
you can have a drink of water
and it goes away and it's perfect again.

The second thing you can do to fix it
is, you can go "Aahaa, aahaa".
I'm the only person
who goes "Aahaa, aahaa".

I hardly even breathe, ever.
Just now and then, like this.

Problem solving

Why do you not like her?
(says Ruby).
She used to not like you
but now you don't like her.

She used to problem solve.
Her powers helped her problem solve.
But she gave her powers
to her friends.

Whenever they want to play
with barbies, "Pooh!
We don't want to play with you,
bogey girl!"

Kyoko and our babies
used to problem solve.
They say, "Bake me. Bake me.
Eat me if you can."

The game of one cat one kitten

We're going to play
the game of one cat one kitten
(says Ruby).

You'll need to be
a lot of characters,
because Gloria won't understand.

You'll have to be my Mum.
I'll say, can I learn how to cook?
And you'll teach me.

And I'll run away
because the Mum's food is yukky
-- we won't say gross.

You pretend to lie on the road
and be a kitten.
I find you and make you my pet.

The more time you spend writing this down,
the less time we have
to play the game.

Healthy Things

I should never be sick
'cause we have Healthy Things
(says Ruby).

They're little tiny small things
and they're a lion. Here, I'll draw one for you.
There are arrows pointing to their tummy,
with skin dots, pale, very hard to see.

You should always have one a day
so you don't get sick.
Well, I've got the hiccups inside my tummy
so I should have had more.

They taste like -- how can I describe it?
Say you were cooking a Healthy Thing
and you just needed two ingredients:
an orange and some salt.

You squeeze out the juice and mix it up,
pour it into a salt bowl
and it turns into a a Healthy Thing.
Hm, how can I describe it?

It tastes like lemon with sour salt.
They're called Healthy Things
because they're Healthy
and because they're Things.

The understudy

My monkeys have been teaching me
a rock dance
(says Ruby).

I am going to make the costume
a bit big
in case I am sick.

If I was sick
you could paint your face
and pretend to be me.

You could change your voice
into a beautiful voice
like mine.

I will teach you the moves.
Just bend your knees a bit.
You have to bend your knees anyway!

You can take my replacement.
The costume might be a bit small
but I promise it will fit you comfortably.

Sue's father

Sue is my friend in Nelson
(says Ruby).
May's father used to be a burglar.
She told me that.

But he wanted to be in a family
so he changed his mind.
Most burglars don't do that.

Talk about burglars

We can talk about burglars
(says Ruby).
You can go first and tell me all
you know about burglars.
Then I can go second and tell you
all I know about burglars.
We can tell each other secret things
that only we know about burglars.

Burglars wear black.
Black hat and black scarf
and special boots that make no noise.
Our burglar used a sock on the line
to sweep all the footprints away.
And then he had to wash it
and put it on the clothes line again.

By the ways,
he couldn't hide in our garden
because we don't have bushes.
We just have plants.
By the ways,
he'd have to lie down,
and we would see his feet.

Morning is pink

Morning is pink
(says Ruby).

If it's pink, it's morning.
And if it's not pink,

you have to go back to sleep
for a long, long time.

The 12 little pigs

I'll tell you a story
(says Ruby).
It's about 12 little pigs
so it's probably going to be
a long sort of story
and it's probably not going to finish.

And they grew and grew and grew
and their birthday was every single day.
The birthday that came first was Hannah,
and she went 12, 13, 14, 15 and she stopped.
She was very cheeky when she was one.

And they were all twins, Anna and Belly,
Fatima, Ruby, Dawny, May,
Yayayaya (it's a Maori name for a girl),
May, Megan, Bella and Belle.

And the house was very big,
as tall as a mountain,
the house was wide enough for 20 houses.
The house was full of beds and furniture,
furniture furniture furniture furniture,
just one big room and nowhere to walk.

Sunburn

I was playing outside on the monkey bars
(says Ruby)

and I started to feel
boiling hot.

So I ran into my classroom
to get sunblock on me.

When you get sunburn
you feel it on your face.

Your cheeks start to get painful
and your nose starts to get painful

and your ears start to get painful
and your eyes and your mouth get painful

and even your hair and your bones
inside your body and your brains get painful.

Not the rest of your body.
Just your head.

I tried to do something to stop it:
I flopped my head around

tried and tried and tried and tried and tried
but it would not work.

In this world

In this world
these are all the sorts of crabs
we didn't know about
(says Ruby).

Crying crabs
mistake crabs and
paper clip crabs.
They scuttle scuttle scuttle
and steal paper clips.

The rule in this world:
you are not allowed to use
horseshoe crabs
for fishing bait.

It's sad: people are not
listening to the rules.
Like Magnus, who touched
the dressing-up during reading
and he touched it again
and he made a choice
and touched it
one more time.
He got into 10-50 trouble,
last-the-whole-year trouble.

It's sad that people don't learn the rules.
So they say yeah,
let's go out and kill
horseshoe crabs
and the god of sea
will get angry.

I'm allowed

I'm allowed to change my name
(says Ruby).

People will think
my name is still Elsie
but my name is Mabel.
I don't like names
that get older.

I'll have each name
for two school weeks
so my other name
gets new again,

clean, and not old.
Maybe I'll be
Ruby Mabel
Ruby Mabel Ruby.