9781416997757

Phineas L. MacGuire (a.k.a. Mac) has three goals for fourth grade:1. To be the best fourth-grade scientist ever.2. To be the best fourth-grade scientist ever.3. To be the best fourth-grade scientist ever.It's a tall order, but he's confident that he can achieve it, especiallysince his friend and rival scientist, Aretha, has asked him to help herearn a scout badge by creating the mold that produces penicillin. After all, who knows more about mold than Mac? And how many fourth graders can say that they've reproduced penicillin? None, as far as Mac knows. But then he has to manage Ben's campaign for class presidentanddeal with his new babysitter, Sarah Fortemeyer, the Teenage Girl Space Alien from the Planet Pink who accidentally got rid of his dried worm collection and now he has to find it. How is he supposed to find time to focus on mold?The second book about Phineas L. MacGuire and his scientific experiments,Phineas L. MacGuire...Gets Slimed!, is as much fun as the first, and includes slimy new experiments that you can do at home!

Frances O’Roark Dowell is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Dovey Coe, which won the Edgar Award and the William Allen White Award; Where I’d Like to Be; The Secret Language of Girls and its sequels The Kind of Friends We Used to Be and The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away; Chicken Boy; Shooting the Moon, which was awarded the Christopher Award; the Phineas L. MacGuire series; Falling In; The Second Life of Abigail Walker, which received three starred reviews; Anybody Shining; Ten Miles Past Normal; Trouble the Water; the Sam the Man series; The Class; and most recently, How to Build a Story. She lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina. Connect with Frances online at FrancesDowell.com.

Preston McDaniels is the illustrator of the Phineas L. MacGuire series and Cynthia Rylant’s Lighthouse Family series. He lives in Aurora, Nebraska, with his wife and two daughters.

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chapter one

My name is Phineas Listerman MacGuire.

Most people call me Mac.

My Sunday-school teacher and my pediatrician call me Phineas.

A few people, mostly my great-uncle Phil and his cockatiel, Sparky, call me Phin.

Nobody calls me Listerman.

Nobody.

I mean not one single person.

Everybody got that?

I am currently in the fourth grade at Woodbrook Elementary School. On the first day of school my teacher, Mrs. Tuttle, asked us to write down our number one, two, and three goals for the year. Here is what I wrote:

To be the best fourth-grade scientist ever

So far this has not happened.