Chapter One

Glenda Walker had always been told that Margaret’s first day of school would just be awful.

“I cried all that day,” Glenda’s friend Wendy warned. “I just couldn’t believe my little baby was five and going to Kindergarten!”

Glenda had listened sympathetically. She could see how some moms, and maybe even dads, would really have a hard time accepting that their “babies” were doing what everybody is supposed to do - growing up. Still, Glenda wasn’t like a lot of her friends. She didn’t cry at movies or at television shows unless they were really sad. And she didn’t cry much at other times either. She was proud of her daughter and was excited to see how Margaret would do at school.

On Margaret’s first day, Glenda did wake up a little bit earlier than usual. She made Margaret’s favorite, pancakes, for breakfast. Margaret’s little brother Isaac hated pancakes for some reason. Margaret thought that was really weird.

Margaret ate her pancakes really fast. In fact, her dad, Gary, couldn’t believe how fast she had eaten.

“Someone is excited, huh?” He said smilingly.

Margaret smiled and wrapped her arms around her dad’s neck. He was already dressed and ready for work. Margaret loved how her dad smelled after shaving. It was the smell of fresh and clean. It also made her think that it was the smell of being ready to work hard. She wondered if she smelled that way to her dad.

Margaret looked at her mom. “Can I put it on now? Please?”

“Yes, I’ll be up in a minute to help you with your hair.”

“Yay!” Margaret practically ran upstairs to her bedroom. Her brand new dress, which she and her mom had gotten a couple of weeks ago, had been bought special for this first day of school. It was quite a pretty dress, with a dark red top and then a little plaid skirt at the bottom.

By the time Glenda made it upstairs, Margaret already had her dress on. “How do you want to do your hair, M?” Glenda asked.

“I want a ponytail, please. With my red ribbon.”

Glenda pulled out the pretty, shiny red ribbon that was in Margaret’s top dresser drawer and started combing her daughter’s hair. Margaret’s hair was a combination of her mom and dad’s hair. Like her dad, Margaret had hair that was thick and wavy. Like her mom’s hair, there was some curl to it, and it was thicker in the bottom levels than it was on the top.

As Glenda gathered all of Margaret’s hair into a ponytail, she went over again some of what Margaret should be ready for.

“Always remember that when you’re at school, you are to listen to your teachers and respect them, just like you are to listen and respect dad and me when you’re at home. Be nice to other kids, and if kids are mean to you at any time, just tell a teacher. Never talk to strangers, and always take the bus home. Dad or I will write a note and let you know in person if we are coming to pick you up or if someone else is, okay?”

Margaret had heard all of this before, but she wasn’t really paying attention. The dress looked as pretty as it had in the store, and now it was all hers. Her favorite shiny red ribbon was in her hair. Now her mom was struggling to get her in her tights, which would then lead to Margaret getting to put on her new shiny black shoes. They clicked on the floor when she walked because they had little heels on them.

While Margaret continued to dance and twirl in her new outfit, Glenda double-checked the lunchbox. Peanut butter and jelly on white bread, cut into 2 triangles. Strip cheese. A special little surprise was the last touch - a little candy bar.

Gary called up to Margaret. “Hey Margo, come on down, we want to take some pictures of you on this special day!”

Margaret came carefully clacking down the stairs, a noise that her little brother thought was hilarious. He started hitting his little toy drumstick on a table to copy the sound. Glenda gently removed the toy from his grasp.

Everyone went outside. Margaret stood with her lunchbox in her hand, carefully showing off her new dress, her hair, and her new shoes in different poses. For a very brief moment, Glenda caught her breath and thought how strange it was that her little girl could look so grown up. Her eyes burned a little. She wiped her face and Gary gave her a little look. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

All of a sudden, a big lumbering sound came towards the house.

“Here comes your bus, babe!” Gary said.

Margaret hugged her dad, then her mom. She tried to give Isaac a hug but he was very busy watching a squirrel that was hopping around.

“Have a good day!” Glenda yelled as Margaret climbed the giant bus steps.

When Margaret got on the bus, the skies had been blue. It was sunny and warm and all of the birds were chirping. But when the bus came back in the afternoon, the sky was grey, and just as Margaret opened the front door, it started to rain.

Glenda came out of the living room and gave her daughter a big hug.

“Well? How was it? Tell me everything! How is your teacher? Do you like her?”

Margaret was very tired and felt a little overwhelmed. She had met a lot of new people that day. A lot of new kids, a lot of new teachers. When she felt like there was too much going on, she got kind of quiet. Her mom had guessed that this might be how Margaret would feel.

“Would a brownie help you remember how to talk to your old mom?”

“Is it a brownie with walnuts in it?” Margaret asked.

“Well, there’s just one way to find out!”

Glenda walked into the kitchen, where Isaac was already set up in his high chair. Margaret sat down, and suddenly, in front of her, on a little plate, was a big brownie with her mom’s homemade icing on top. Margaret took a bit.

“It does have walnuts!” She practically yelled with glee.

“She might be in Kindergarten, but I still know what she likes,” Glenda thought to herself.

After Margaret had taken a few bites, she asked, “Mom, can I see your bird book?”

“You mean my Field Guide?”

“Yeah, the one with all the pictures and names of the birds,” Margaret replied. This had been one of her favorite books when she was a toddler. She loved all of the colors and shapes that birds came in.

“Did you learn about birds today?” Glenda asked, handing the book to Margaret.

“Well, no, not really. But at recess, these kids were swinging, and I was walking toward them, and they all started yelling that they saw a midget! I looked around and didn’t see one, so I wanted to see what they look like so I can maybe see one tomorrow.”

Glenda and Gary had known that Margaret would be teased because she was different from other kids. She had always been very small. The doctors had done lots of tests and hadn’t found anything wrong. Everything seemed to work fine. Margaret was just a bit smaller than everyone else. Since there weren’t a lot of kids in the neighborhood, she had not really noticed this much. Gary and Glenda had hoped that Margaret’s first experience with lots of kids would be mostly okay. Now, Glenda really did feel like crying.

Margaret finished her brownie and started looking through the field guide, looking for bird names that began with the letter m. Glenda cleared away her brownie plate, then took away the book and put it back on the shelf.

“But I didn’t find it yet, Mom!” Margaret was frustrated.

“Margaret,” Glenda said, I have to tell you something, and you’re not going to like it very much.”

Margaret was a little scared. She wasn’t used to being talked to this way.

Glenda took Margaret’s hand. “Honey, a midget is not a kind of bird. Midget is what people sometimes call other people who are small.”

“So, they were pointing at me when they were laughing and saying that word?” Margaret gulped.

Glenda took her daughter into her lap. “I’m afraid so, honey. But you don’t worry about that. You are fine just the way you are, and if they pick on you again tomorrow, you just tell a teacher.

“I wish it was a kind of bird,” Margaret whimpered.

Chapter Two: A Fate Worse Than Munchkin

The school year moved along, day by day, week by week. Some days, Margaret came home weeping.

"I was walking down the hall and all of these kids I was walking towards scrunched down real low and started laughing," she said one day.

"I was sitting at lunch and this big kid put his arms around my neck and pushed me up and down saying "dead or alive," Margaret told her mother on another day. That one made Glenda call the principal and ask where all of the teachers on duty were.

Some days though, there was good news. Margaret and her class got to go to her teacher's farm one day, and they all saw honey bee hives. Margaret started making friends. Her conversations at dinner became peppered with new names. Jessica. Leia. Melanie.

As far as Margaret was concerned, even on the good days, school was a necessary evil. Her mom and dad had always told her that she was going to go to school, all the way till college, which she figured out was up to sixteenth grade. Sixteen grades, and she wasn't even in first yet. It was going to be a long haul. She figured that she might as well just get used to the idea. In the meantime, she couldn't figure out what she hated more, being picked on or trying to figure out math.

Then, it came time for the school play.

It was a a chilly day in September and the entire school had been called to an assembly after lunch. It was announced that there was going to be a play, and it was going to be Wizard of Oz. Anybody from any grade, K-4, could try out for parts.

At first, Margaret felt really excited. She had always loved Wizard of Oz. She had sung Follow the Yellow Brick Road even before she understood the words. She had thought they were saying "falla the yellowbrickroad." Margaret had felt quite grown up when she not only understood what the song's words were but also noticed that the characters sang it while actually walking on the yellow brick road. She loved that the good witch had the same name as her mom. She loved that Dorothy realized all of her friends from Oz were really her friends in Kansas. There was a lot to love about Wizard of Oz.

Suddenly, though, Margaret realized a key part of the movie. Munchkin Land. The Lullaby League.

"How could I have FORGOTTEN about the munchkins?" Margaret thought to herself. Tiny beads of sweat popped up suddenly on her forehead. Her hands got clammy. Margaret didn't understand 100% why, but she knew, suddenly, that if she was cast as a munchkin, only bad things would result.

"I know who should try out for Toto!" one of the third-grade boys yelled out. His name was Jay. He always seemed to pick on Margaret.

"Yeah, we have the perfectly sized person to play a dog," Jay's friend Mitch yelled out.

Little bursts of laughter began popping around the huge gymnasium. Everybody knew that the boys were talking about Margaret. Even Margaret, at this point used to the fact that most jokes were about her, realized that they were talking about her.

The music teacher who was making the announcement, Mrs. Ford, didn't say anything. Margaret wasn't sure if she heard what was going on or not.

"Maybe she doesn't know they're talking about me, even if she did hear them," Margaret thought hopefully.

Mrs. Ford announced that the sign-up sheet would be posted in the lunchroom. Try-outs would be in a week, and at the end of that week, the players would be announced.

That night Margaret was in a foul mood.

"What is wrong with you?" Glenda asked after Margaret yanked one of her toys out of Isaac's hands.

"My school is going to be doing a Wizard of Oz play," Margaret's voice sounded oddly angry and bitter, even to her own ears. "And at the school assembly today all the boys said they knew who should play Toto, and they were all laughing, and they were talking about me!"

Margaret's dad was reading the paper at the dining room table. He chimed in, "Margaret, how do you know they were talking about you? They could have been talking about any number of people."

"Because they said they knew someone who was the perfect size, Dad. I'm the littlest person at school."

"I think you're making too big a deal out of this one, Margaret. And I'd appreciate it if you changed your tone."

Margaret didn't understand why her dad didn't understand the situation. Everyone laughed at her all the time. When the word "size" was included, that was a clear signal that the laughter was aimed at her. Everyone knew Margaret was the smallest kid in the school. Why was her dad making it seem like this was her fault? And then he yells at her for her tone of voice? It just wasn't fair.

Margaret went to her room, threw herself on her bed, and started to cry. It was bad enough that Jay and Mitch and lots of other kids picked on her all of the time. But why hadn't Mrs. Ford said anything? Why hadn't her dad gotten mad at the other kids instead of getting mad at her? None of it made any sense.

The next day at lunch, Margaret's friend Jessica sat down, pulled a sandwich out of her lunch box, and then put it down.

"Margaret, I think there's something you need to look at," Jessica began.

"What?" Margaret's heart had been full of dread just walking into the school that morning. Now she was sweating again. She put her sandwich down, too.

"Well, go over and look at the sign-up sheet," Jessica said as she kind of tilted her head towards the piece of paper.

Margaret got up and walked over to the wall. She could barely read the sheet because it was high on the wall, but she didn't have look too hard to see that someone had written in her name, which she knew how to read, next to the hand-written role of Toto.

Margaret wanted to rip the sheet off the wall. She jumped up and reached her hand as high as she could, but she couldn't reach it. Now she heard kids laughing, and she felt pretty sure they were laughing at her. Suddenly, Margaret felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Mrs. Ford.

Mrs. Ford took the sheet off the wall, then leaned down.

"Why don't you grab your lunch and then come with me to my office," Mrs. Ford said.

Margaret went back to her table. Jessica was eating her sandwich. She didn't look at Margaret. She just kept looking down, like it was taking a lot of focus to eat that peanut butter & jelly. Margaret put her own pb&j back into its plastic bag, then all of her food back into her lunch box. She walked over to where Mrs. Ford was standing. Mrs. Ford was looking at the table where Jay and his friends were sitting. They were all concentrating on eating their lunches, too.

Mrs. Ford took Margaret's hand and they walked to Mrs. Ford's office, which was in the back corner of the music room. Margaret had never been in a teacher's office before. It seemed kind of messy. There were magazines everywhere. Sheet music. Margaret saw pictures of kids and figured they must be Mrs. Ford's kids.

"Margaret, I want to say sorry to you for what those kids did," Mrs. Ford said earnestly.

Suddenly, red hot tears started burning Margaret's eyes. She had always loved music class with Mrs. Ford and had always been happy in the music room. Now she felt really humiliated that Mrs. Ford had seen the piece of paper and had had to come to her rescue.

"Margaret, I would really like you to be in our school play. I think you'd do a really good job. Now, of course I am not going to cast anyone as Toto, but I wanted to run something by you."

Margaret was worried that a lot of snot was coming out of her now, which was even more embarrassing.

"Margaret, I'd really like for you to be one of the three ladies in the Lullaby League. Now, I want you to know that this has nothing to do with your height. I was planning on having 3 girls from Kindergarten do that role. But I wanted to ask you about it so that if it would make you uncomfortable, you could just let me know. I won't make you try out or anything. You have a really good voice, and I think when other kids see and hear that they might get off your case a little bit. What do you think?"

Mrs. Ford reached over to the other side of her desk and pulled out a blue tissue from her tissue box. It felt powdery.

Margaret rubbed her nose, crumbled up the tissue in her hand, and began to think. Did she really have a good voice? Would being in the Lullaby League really help her shut the other kids up? It could be fun to be on stage. Her mom and dad and maybe Isaac could come. And it seemed like Mrs. Ford really wanted her to do it.

"Okay, I'll try it," Margaret said.

That afternoon, when the announcements came on, the principal said, "Now I have a note here from Mrs. Ford. Apparently some of you thought it would be funny to use the play sign-up sheet as a way to make fun of one of your classmates. Because of that, anyone who wants to try out for the play for the rest of the week will have to see Mrs. Ford personally."

Margaret definitely liked that Mrs. Ford.