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    Oscar and the Amazing Gravity Repellent
    Oscar and the Amazing Gravity Repellent
    Oscar and the Amazing Gravity Repellent
    Ebook129 pages1 hour

    Oscar and the Amazing Gravity Repellent

    By Tina L. Peterson and Xavier Bonet

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    About this ebook

    Oscar Schmidt is a klutz and gravity is his nemesis - it pulls him down, trips him up, and helps the neighborhood bullies make his life all-around awful. But when Oscar finds an abandoned train caboose one day after school, everything changes. Inside, he discovers a magical potion: Dr. Oopsie's Amazing Gravity Repellent. Along with his best friend, Asha, Oscar learns what happens when he defies the laws of nature. But when the caboose comes under attack from a group of bullies, Oscar's reaction puts his worst enemy in serious danger. Oscar must face the consequences of his actions, figure out right from wrong, and learn how to stand up for himself.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCapstone Young Readers
    Release dateAug 1, 2015
    ISBN9781623705862
    Oscar and the Amazing Gravity Repellent

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    • 5/5
      Oscar is a klutz. He trips over things, knocks things over, and spills things. He is the kind of kid that all kids can relate to and even us adults. He is bullied by the bigger kids and has one really good friend (Asha) who doesn't care if he's a klutz.One day, Oscar heads home a different way, because he doesn't want to run into the bullies from school. He stumbles on an old caboose with the help of a raccoon. He tries to get inside but can't because the door is rusted shut. After getting a spray and wanting to head to the caboose the next day, Asha wants to go with him. He finally relents. They get the door open and find all kinds of things inside. One is a mysterious bottle labeled Gravity Repellent. The two kids try it on a rock and watch as it floats. Oscar has a lot of things he wants to do with the spray and one time, it gets him in trouble. But when the bullies find the caboose, Oscar gets really mad, and the one thing he does isn't what he should have done. Could too much of something cause a lot of problems? Got to read this funny book to find out.I think most kids would find this book fun to read. And there are a few lessons they can see that Oscar learns that they can learn too. I recommend this book to all kids.I won this book from a Goodreads Giveaway.
    • 5/5
      This is a great book for kids, especially those that feel klutzy or left out or bullied. Oscar is that child that trips over his own feet, daydreams and is teased and bullied by the older boys. He has one good friend, Asha, and she is wonderful. When Oscar tries to take a different way home from school to avoid the bullies, he finds an abandoned train caboose. He is unable to get inside so goes back the next day with spray to help loosen the latch. He finds lots of interesting items in the caboose as well as figuring out that it belonged to a Maagician of sorts. He goes to get Asha and together they find several cans of Gravity Repellant. They realize that it will help them float and they begin to have some interesting adventures. Oscar finds out that if he sprays some on his feet and lower legs, he no longer trips and falls all the time. When the bully finds the caboose, Oscar makes a bad decision to keep him from discovering what is inside. Through these adventures, Oscar realizes that he is not a complete klutz and he can stand up for himself with the bullies. A great story with a few good lessons.

      I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

    Book preview

    Oscar and the Amazing Gravity Repellent - Tina L. Peterson

    — Chapter 1 —

    On a Thursday morning one month after he’d started third grade, Oscar Schmidt’s teacher, Mrs. Faust, wrote a word on the board that would change his life forever — GRAVITY.

    Can anyone tell the class what this word means? Mrs. Faust asked.

    Oscar tried to look as small as possible so she wouldn’t call on him. He thought the word had to do with graves and graveyards, but he knew he was probably wrong about that. Caitlin, the teacher’s pet, raised her hand high like she always did when a grown-up asked a question.

    Mrs. Faust called on her. Caitlin?

    It’s the natural force that keeps everything on the ground, Caitlin said primly.

    Ordinarily Oscar found Caitlin rather annoying — she was such a know-it-all — but he sat up and paid attention when she said that.

    Very good, Caitlin, said Mrs. Faust. Gravity is the force that pulls smaller objects toward a bigger object. The earth is a very big object, and its gravitational pull is what keeps everything from floating off the surface.

    Mrs. Faust wrote GRAVITATIONAL PULL on the board, then turned back to her students. Who can tell us who discovered gravity? she asked.

    Caitlin raised her hand again, but Mrs. Faust looked past her at the rest of the class. Oscar tried to make himself small again and was relieved when the teacher called on Asha, his best friend.

    Isaac Newton, Asha answered.

    That’s right, Asha, said Mrs. Faust. Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree one day when an apple fell off and hit him in the head.

    That sounds like something that would happen to me, Oscar thought. He was sort of famous for his klutziness –– he was always falling down, tripping on things, and generally making a mess.

    Newton thought about why the apple fell toward the ground, Mrs. Faust continued, and then he realized that everything on earth fell down rather than up.

    Oscar’s eyes widened as he listened to his teacher’s explanation. Suddenly he remembered something else Mrs. Faust had taught him: the earth is constantly spinning, and that’s why the sun moves across the sky, creating a day and a night.

    Mrs. Faust must have noticed how big his eyes were, because she looked over at him and smiled. Oscar never raised his hand in school, because he was scared of talking to most grown-ups. Sometimes his voice didn’t seem to work when he wanted it to, and even if it did, he usually said something dumb.

    Oscar, said Mrs. Faust. Oscar sat up straight in his desk, and his throat tightened. Can you think of another force that acts on objects without touching them?

    As his classmates waited for him to speak, Oscar racked his brain to think of the answer. They had been learning about forces all week, but he couldn’t think of a single one. His throat was dry, and his face felt warm. Oscar said the first thing that came to mind.

    Um… wind? he guessed. His voice squeaked when he spoke.

    A few of his classmates laughed, but Mrs. Faust smiled. Wind certainly acts on objects, Oscar, she agreed, but it isn’t quite the answer I was looking for.

    Mrs. Faust began talking about magnets pulling on metal objects, but Oscar stopped listening. He felt silly and embarrassed. He put his arm down on his desk so he could hide his face in the crook of his elbow. Unfortunately his arm caught the corner of his open pencil case and sent it crashing to the floor. Along with a book. And a folder of workbook sheets.

    There was an awful silence as all the other students stared at Oscar. They didn’t laugh at him like they used to do in second grade, because their teacher had always shushed them immediately. Oscar almost wished they would laugh. At least then there would be another noise besides him scrambling to gather his things off the floor.

    As Oscar struggled to collect pencils that had rolled under other kids’ desks, he had a realization: the earth was spinning and pulling him to the ground at the same time. It was just like when he and Asha spun around and around in circles. They always fell over after a while. They couldn’t help it — they were dizzy! If the earth made gravity and was always spinning, of course he fell over all the time. It was only natural!

    The more Oscar thought about it, the more surprised he was that people weren’t falling down all over the place. How is anyone still standing at the end of the day, with all this crazy spinning and pulling going on around them? he wondered.

    That day at recess, Oscar watched the other kids on the playground very closely. The girls who played on the monkey bars definitely were pulled by gravity. They had to balance on the top of the bar carefully. When they leaned forward or back, they swung down toward the ground and went back and forth, back and forth until they stopped. But they didn’t usually fall.

    Maybe gravity doesn’t like to get too close to girls, Oscar thought. Maybe it knows that some of them have cooties.

    He watched a group of fourth graders play kickball. Gravity definitely worked on rubber balls. The ball flew, bounced high, bounced low, and then rolled. Oscar suspected that the balls he kicked in gym class had extra gravity added to them, because he could never get them to go very far.

    * * *

    Oscar had been a klutz for most of his life. His mom called him accident-prone, which he didn’t like because it sounded like something a doctor should fix.

    Once, when he was about six years old, he’d decided that he wasn’t accident-prone at all. He was actually a superhero who could fall over and break stuff in ways normal people couldn’t. So he’d put on an old Halloween mask and taped a constuction-paper S to his chest. It stood for Super… something. He hadn’t decided what.

    With a tablecloth-cape tied around his neck, Oscar had zoomed around the house being Super-something. He’d run down to the basement where his dad had been painting a chair. Unfortunately, his cape had caught on the banister just as he’d rounded the corner.

    Gurf.

    Stupid Super-something cape.

    Whenever Oscar fell or tripped or broke something, he wanted to thrash his arms and kick his feet and yell, "Why? Whywhywhywhywhy! Why does stuff keep getting in my way? Why is it always me falling down and wrecking stuff? It’s not FAIR!"

    But Oscar knew if he did that, people would stare at him. And he really didn’t like being stared at. So even if he hurt himself, he kept it to one word — or grunt, really — Gurf.

    After he had knocked over the paint can, Oscar had decided that maybe he wasn’t a superhero after all. Maybe he was a rock star! He’d heard a story once about a rock star who’d broken his guitar while he was onstage.

    I could do that! Oscar had thought. I’d be great at that!

    His older sister, Gretchen, had liked the idea and said a rock star needed a T-shirt. She’d used a black marker to write TOUR OF DESTRUCTION in jagged letters on the back of Oscar’s T-shirt. Then she’d treated him like a rock star for a whole day. She’d even asked him to autograph a piece of the lamp he’d broken that morning. Oscar had loved the attention; it made him feel like his accidents were cool instead of embarrassing. He’d sung along to the radio in the car for days after that, and his parents looked at him curiously.

    Oscar had thought his rock star T-shirt was so cool that he’d worn it for two weeks straight until it got stinky. Finally his dad had thrown it in the laundry. But what Dad hadn’t noticed was the brand-new red sock hiding in the washing machine. When it came out of the dryer, Oscar’s TOUR OF DESTRUCTION T-shirt was pink. Oscar had cried — very quietly and thrown it in the trash.

    Gretchen had told him that he didn’t need a T-shirt to be a rock star. He just needed some greatest hits. She’d suggested that he document his tour to make sure his fans would remember it all. So Oscar had pulled out his brand-new box of colored pencils and started drawing all of his most memorable accidents.

    The first thing on Oscar’s Greatest Hits was the time he’d dropped his mom’s phone into the fishbowl. He’d

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