1 BEAN GETS ANTSY

IVY + BEAN WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA by annie barrows

Bean Gets Antsy There had been a problem in Bean's house. The problem was staples. Bean loved staples. She

loved them so much that she had stapled things that weren't supposed to be stapled. The things looked better stapled, but her mother didn't think so, and now Bean was outside. She was going to be outside for a long time. She looked at her backyard. Same old yard, same old trampoline, same old dinky plastic playhouse, same old pile of buckets and ropes and stilts. None of them was any fun. Maybe she could play junkyard crash. Junkyard crash was when you stacked up all the stuff you could find and then drove the toy car into the stack. But it was no fun alone. Bean got up and scuffed across the nice green lawn until she reached the not-so-nice green lawn. This part of Bean's lawn had holes and lumps in it. The lumps were mostly places where Bean had buried treasure for kids of the future.

Bean picked up a shovel. To heck with kids of the future. She was bored now. And maybe a secret admirer had added something interesting to her treasure, like a ruby skull or a dinosaur egg. Bean didn't bury her treasure very deep, so it was easy to dig up. This treasure was inside a paper bag, but the paper bag wasn't doing so well. It wasn't really a paper bag anymore. "Holy moly!" Bean said loudly. "I've found treasure!" She pulled the clumps of paper apart. What a disappointment. No ruby skull. No

dinosaur egg. Just the same stuff she had buried two weeks ago: dental floss, tweezers, and a magnifying glass. Some treasure. Bean flopped over on her stomach. "I'm dying of boredom," she moaned, hoping her mother would hear, "I'm dyyy-ing." She coughed in a dying sort of way, "huh-ACK!" and then lay still. Anyone looking from the porch would think she was dead. And then that person would feel bad. Bean lay still.

Very still. She could hear her heart thumping. She could feel the hairs on her arm moving. Bean opened her eyes. There was an ant scurrying over her arm. Bean pulled the magnifying glass over and peered at the ant. Her arm was like a mountain, and the little ant was like a mountain climber, stumbling along with a tired expression on his face. Poor, hardworking ant. She knew how he felt because sometimes her parents made her go hiking. She watched as he dodged between hairs and charged down the other side of her arm toward the ground. She offered him a blade of grass to use as a slide, but that seemed to confuse him. He paused, looked anxiously right and left, and then continued on her arm. He had a plan, and he was going to stick to it. Bean watched through the magnifying glass as he scuttled into the grass, rushing along the ground between blades. He was in a big hurry. He met another