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artist named Ursula (no last name) that was appearing at a Georgetown gallery. Apparently most of her artwork had to do with fish.
    â€œI am trying to capture the beauty of the ocean before it is destroyed by global warming,” she said, which made Stinky like her right off. But the magazine’s reviewer, a guy named Bartholomew Huffleberger, didn’t like her one bit.
    â€œThe problem with fish,” he wrote, “is that they stink after a relatively short time. We would be better off if this exhibit closed immediately.”

10. Jake
Nanny X Heads for the White House

    My homework for Monday was as good as done, because that art review had more reading-connection words than I’ve ever found in one place. It started like this:
    An artist known by the moniker of Ursula opened her one-woman show at Gallery 24 in Georgetown last night, and I, for one, would have been in a more convivial mood had I been attending a closing instead. Ursula’s work is didactic, shows no innovation, and is redundant besides. Her inspiration is the fish, and like the creature she so admires, I find her work malodorous. Her paintings appear realistic enough, but her fishes’ sad eyes give them the twee appearance of Precious Moments figurines. Like Ursula’s much-loved salmon, the artist will have to fight her way upstream. This reviewer was not hooked, and when he told the artist of hisdisappointment, she smeared his suit with salmon pâté
.
    Nanny X explained some of the words: “didactic” (which means you’re being too lecture-y), “convivial” (which means pleasant and agreeable), “pâté” (which means ground-up meat or fish) and “moniker” (which I already figured out meant name). The part I didn’t have to ask about came in the last paragraph, when he said that one of Ursula’s fish sculptures looked like a turnip and she should go back to doing arts and crafts with the local Girl Scout troop. Plus, he said that the gallery should have installed a show by his eight-year-old niece instead.
    Boris punched more words into his phone—“Ursula,” “fish” and “art”—so we could find a picture of her work. All he got was a bunch of pictures of the Sea Witch from
The Little Mermaid
.
    But he also saw a breaking news story about the art world. Portrait of President Washington Disappears from National Gallery of Art,” the headline said.
    Nanny X looked at her watch again. “Ten past noon,” she said. “This is it. The Angler has made the first move.”
    Ali stared at the ground and looked like she’d been the one who was hit in the head with a giant thumb. It was a full minute before any of us said anything.
    â€œA portrait of George Washington doesn’t seem like much of a treasure,” I said, to make everybody feel better. “As long as it wasn’t the one of him crossing the Delaware. There are loads of portraits of Washington. Aren’t there?”
    Boris shook his head. “It says here that this was a rare portrait painted by the artist Salvador Dali. He did not live in Washington’s time, of course, but he’s very famous. Nobody knew the portrait existed until three months agowhen it was discovered at a flea market. This article even hails it as ‘a new national treasure.’ It’s worth millions.”
    I thought we would go straight to the gallery until Ali said, “We should go see Bartholomew Huffleberger. I’ll bet he could give us a list of people who could have made the fish statue. He could tell us if one of them was Ursula.”
    â€œHow can he do that if he’s never seen the fish statue?” I said. “
We
haven’t even seen it.” I looked at Nanny X. “Do we have a picture?”
    Nanny X lifted her hat. She took Mr. Ow off her head and put it back in the diaper bag. “I checked on that last night,” she said.