FUZZY MUD
LOUIS SACHAR
Louis Sachar is the author of the New York Times best seller Holes, which won the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, and the Christopher award, as well as Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green lake; Small Steps, winner of the Schneider Family Book Award; and The Cardturner, a Publishers Weekly Best Book, a Parents' Choice Gold Award recipient, and an ALA-YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Book. His books for younger readers include There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom, The Boy Who Lost His Face, Dogs Don't Tell Jokes, and the Marvin Redpost series, among many others.
Summary:
Fifth grader Ramaya Dhilwadi and seventh grader Marshall Walsh have been walking to and from Woodridge Academy together since elementary school. But their routine is disrupted when bully Chad Hilligas challenges Marshall to a fight. To avoid the conflict, Marshall takes a shortcut home through the off-limits woods. Tamaya, unaware of the reason for the detour, reluctantly follows. They soon get lost. And then they find trouble. Bigger trouble than anyone could ever have imagined.
In the days and weeks that follow, the authorities and the US. Senate become involved, and what they uncover might affect the future of the world.
In his way style, Louis Sachar explores timeless themes of friendship, family, and doing the right thing. Fuzzy Mud is a mystery-thriller that engages both the mind and the heart.
Fuzzy Mud
Chapter-1
Tuesday, November 2
11:55am
Woodbridge Academy, a private school in Heath Cliff, Pennsylvania, had once been the home of William Health, after whom the town had been named. Nearly three hundred students now attended school in the four-story, black-and-brown stone building where William Heath had lived from 1891 to 1917, with only his wife and three daughters.
Tamaya Dhilwaddi's fifth-grade classroom on the fourth floor had been the youngest daughter's bedroom. The kindergarten area had once been the stables.
The lunchroom used to be a grand ballroom, where elegantly dressed couples had sipped champagne and danced to a live orchestra. Crystal chandeliers still hung from the ceiling, but these days the room permanently smelled of stale macaroni and cheese. Two hundred and eighty-nine kids, ages five to fourteen, crammed their mouths with Cheetos, made jokes about boogers, spilled milk, and shrieked for no apparent reason.
Tamaya didn't shriek, but she did gasp very quietly as she covered her mouth with her hand.
"He's got this super long bread," a boy was saying, "splotched all over with blood."
"And no teeth," another boy added.
They were boys from the upper grades. Tamaya felt excited just talking to them, although, so far, she had been too nervous to actually say anything. She was sitting in the middle of a long table, eating lunch with her friends Monica, Hope, and Summer. One of the older boys' legs was only inches away from hers.
"The guy can't chew his own food," said the first boy. "So his dogs have to chew it up for him. Then they spit it out, and then he eats it."
"That is so disgusting!" exclaimed Monica, but from the way her eyes shone when she said it, Tamaya could tell that her best friend was just as excited as she was to have the attention of the older boys.
The boys had been telling the girls about a deranged hermit who lived in the woods. Tamaya didn't believe half of what they said. She knew boys liked to show off. Still, it was fun to let herself get caught up in it.
"Except they're not really dogs," said the boy sitting next to Tamaya. "They're more like wolves! Big and black, with giant fangs and glowing red eyes."
Tamaya shuddered.
Woodridge Academy was surrounded by miles of woods and rocky hills. Tamaya walked to school every morning with Marshall Walsh, a seventh-grade boy who lived three houses down from her and on the other side of their tree-lined street. Their walk was almost two miles long, but it would have been a lot shorter if they hadn't had to circle around the woods.
"So what does he eat?" asked Summer.
The boy next to Tamaya shrugged. "Whatever his wolves bring him," he said. "Squirrels, rats, people. He doesn't care, just so long as it's food!"
The boy took a big bite of his tuna fish sandwich, then imitated the hermit by curling his lips so that it looked like he didn't have any teeth. He opened and closed his mouth in an exaggerated manner, showing Tamaya his partially chewed food.
"You are so gross!" exclaimed Summer from the other side of Tamaya.
All the boys laughed.
Summer was the prettiest of Tamaya's friends, with straw-colored hair and sky-blue eyes. Tamaya figured that was probably the reason the boys were talking to them in the first place. Boys were always acting silly around Summer.
Tamaya had dark eyes and dark hair that hung only halfway down her neck. It used to be a lot longer, but three days before school started, while she was still in Philadelphia with her dad, she made the drastic decision to chop it off. Her dad took her to a very posh hair salon that he probably couldn't afford. As soon as she got it cut, she was filled with regret, but when she got back to Heath Cliff, her friends all told her how mature and sophisticated she looked.
Her parents were divorced. She spent most of the summer with her dad, and one weekend each month during the school year. Philadelphia was on the opposite end of the state, three hundred miles away. When she returned home to Health Cliff, she always had the feeling that she'd missed something important while she'd been gone. It might have been nothing more than an inside joke that her friends all laughed at, but she always felt a little left out, and it took her a while to get back into the groove.
"He came this close to eating me," said one of the boys, a tough-looking kid with short black hair and a square face. "A wolf snapped at my leg just as I was climbing back over the fence."
The boy stood on top of the bench and showed the girls his pant leg for proof. It was covered in dirt, and Tamaya could see a small hole just above his sneaker, but that could have come from anything. Besides, she thought, if he'd been running away from the wolf, then the hole would have been in the back of his pants, not the front.
The boy stared down at her. He had blue, steel-like eyes, and Tamaya got the feeling that he could read her mind and was daring her to say something.
She swallowed, then said, " You're not really allowed in the woods."
The boy laughed, and then the other boys laughed too.
"What are you going to do?" he challenged. "Tell Mrs. Thaxton?"
She felt her face redden. "No."
"Don't listen to her," said Hope. "Tamaya's a real Goody Two-shoe."
The words stung. Just a few seconds earlier, she had been feeling so cool, talking with the older boys. Now they were all looking at her as if she were some kind of freak.
She tried making a joke out of it. "I guess I'll only wear one shoe from now on."
Nobody laughed.
"You are kind of a goody-goody," said Monica.
Tamaya bit her lip. She didn't't get why what she had said had been so wrong. After all, Monica and Summer had just called the boys disgusting and gross, but somehow that was okay. If anything, the boys seemed proud that the girls thought they were disgusting and gross.
When did the rules change? she wondered. When did it become bad to be good?
...............
Across the lunchroom, Marshall Walsh sat amid a bunch of kids, all laughing and talking loudly. On one side of Marshall sat one group. On his other side sat a different group. Between these two groups, Marshall silently ate alone.
Word Meaning:
shrieked= To make such a cry
splotched = a mark or spot with an irregular shape.
deranged = behaving in a way that is dangerous
fang= a long, sharp tooth
shuddered= To shake suddenly with very small movements because of a very unpleasant thought
exaggerated= seeming larger more important better or worse than it really is
sophisticated = having a good understanding of the way people behave a good knowledge of culture and fashion.
groove= A group of trees planted close together.
Question/Answer:
Q.1. Who is the author of Fuzzy Mud story?
Ans: Louis Sachar
Q.2. What is the name of the private school the characters attend?
Ans: Woodridge Academy
Chapter- 2
SunRay Farm
In a secluded valley thirty-three miles northwest of Wood-ridge Academy was SunRay Farm. You wouldn't know it was a farm if you saw it. There were no animals, no green pastures, and no crops - at least, none that grew big enough for anyone to see with the naked eye.
Instead, what you would see- if you made it past the armed guards, past the around guards, past the electric fence topped with bared wire, past the alarms and security cameras - would be rows and rows of giant storage tanks. You also wouldn't be able to see the net-work of tunnels and underground pipes connecting the storage tanks to the main laboratory, also underground.
Hardly anyone in Health Cliff knew about SunRay Farm, and certainly not Tamaya or her friends. Those who had heard of it had only vague ideas about what was going on there. They might have heard of Biolene but probably didn't know exactly what it was.
A little more than a year before - that is, about a year before a Tamaya Dilwaddi cut her hair and started the fifth grade - the United States Senate Committee on Energy and the Environment held a series of secret hearings regarding SunRay Farm and Biolene.
The following testimony is excerpted from that inquiry.
Q.1. In chapter-2 of Fuzzy Mud when were all of the secret hearings held?
Ans: The United States senate Committee on Energy and the Environment held secret hearings about SunRay Farm and Biolene. The narrator includes excerpts of testimony from the inquiry. SunRay Farm is an experimental laboratory that began producing Biolene, which is promoted as a clean energy source.
Word Meaning:
Secluded = not seen or visited by many people; sheltered and private.
pastures = land covered with grass and other low plants suitable for grazing animals, especially cattle or sheep.
Barbed = having a sharp point that curves backward.
value = not clearly expressed, known, described, or decided
excerpted = to take a small part from a speech, book, movie, etc. in order to publish it separately.
flailing = to move energetically in an uncontrolled way.
muttering = the sound of one or more people talking quietly
abomination = something that you dislike and disapprove of.
Chapter-3
Tuesday, November 2
2:55 pm
After school, Tamaya waited by the bike racks for Marshall. The racks were empty. Most of the students at Woodridge Academy lived too far away to ride their bikes, and there were no school buses for the private school. A line of cars extend from the circular driveway up Woodridge Lane toward Richmond Road.
As Tamaya watched the other kids climb into cars and drive off, she wished she had a ride too. She was already dreading the long walk home. It would feel even longer with a backpack full of books.
Word Meaning:
dreading = To feel extremely worried or frightened about something that is going to happen.
placing = hitting quickly
lurking = to wait or move in a secret way so that you cannot be seen
expelled = To force something to leave a school, organization or country.
wiggled = to move up and down from side to side
pretend = to behave as if something is true when you know that it is not
deceive = to persuade someone that something false is the true
persuade = to make something believe something
Chapter- 4
Marshall Walsh
Marshall Walsh wasn't as brave as Tamaya thought.
He used to have lots of friends. He used to like school. He had taken band in the sixth grade, and his music teacher, Mr. Rowan, had written on his report card that what he lacked in talent, he made up for with enthusiasm.
Marshall plays the tuba with gusto.
He wasn't enthusiastic about anything anymore. Each day brought him nothing but more misery and humiliation. And it had all started with a new kid in his class, Chad Hilligas.
Students attended Woodridge Academy for one of two reasons. Either they were really smart, or else their parents were really rich. Tamaya was one of the smart ones. Marshall was an in-betweener. His parents weren't rich, but they both had good jobs, and they considered education to be extremely important. They cut back in other areas, like family vacations and going out to restaurants.
W/M
humiliation = the feeling of being ashamed or losing respect for yourself
conscientious = putting a lot of effort into your work.
bragged = to speak too proudly about what you have done
awe = a feeling of great respect sometimes mixed with fear or surprise
ridden = full of something unpleasant or bad
shredded = having strong, well-developed muscles that can be seen through the slain and little body fat
feeble = weak and without energy, strength, or power.
crouch = To bend your knees and lower yourself so that you are close
snide = containing unpleasant criticism that is not clearly stated.
Chapter-5
Tuesday, November 2
3:18 pm
By the time Tamaya made it to the other side of the fence, Marshall had already disappeared through the trees. She picked up her backpack and hurried after him, slipping her arms through the straps as she ran. Ducking under a low branch, she spotted him climbing over a small mound of boulders. "Wait up!" she called.
Again, he disappeared from view.
Her knee banged against one of the boulders as she scrambled over the mound. He was waiting for her on the other side, hands on hips, an annoyed look on his face. "What's the point in taking a shortcut if I have to keep stopping and waiting for you to come poking along?"
"I'm not poking," Tamaya insisted.
Word/Meaning:
boulder = a very large rock
mound = a large pile of earth, stone etc.
splotched = a mark or spot that doesn't have a regular shape.
pleaded = to make an urgent, emotional statement or request for something
cracked = to make a lot of short, dry, sharp sounds
Chapter-6
The Ergie
The following is another excerpt from the secret inquiry into SunRay Farm:
Chapter-7
Tuesday, November 2
4:10 pm
"Be careful not to step in that," Tamaya warned as Chad Hilligas made his way around the strange mud. "What do you think all that weird fuzzy stuff is?" she asked.
She might as well have been speaking a foreign language, the way Chad looked at her. He spit on the ground, then looked her in the eye and demanded, "Where's Marshall?"