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made a rattling sound.
    "If zoo animals get sick," Sam said loudly, "I have to give them pills. Special animal pills."
    But the children weren't listening anymore. They were all on their feet, heading to the worktables.
    "Mrs. Bennett," Sam said unhappily, "I have other animals to tell about." He tilted his head, looking up to see his teacher's face. The Tigers cap was much too large, and made it hard for him to see.
    Mrs. Bennett adjusted his hat a little. She glanced over at the large trash bag behind the
piano. "How many do you have, Sam?" she asked.

    Sam and his mom had counted them that morning, in the kitchen. "Thirty," Sam said.
    Mrs. Bennett sighed. He could see her thinking. At the first table, Becky was starting to cry because she'd already cut her orange paper wrong. Miss Ruth was trying to comfort her, but Becky wanted Mrs. Bennett.
    "Tell you what, Sam," she said, leading him to his place at one of the tables. "You've done two. Cubs and tigers. Why don't you wear one hat each day, and tell us about one animal each day? You have twenty-eight more. That's almost six weeks of animals!"
    Sam brightened. For six weeks he could stand in front of the circle and feel that feeling of being the most interesting person in the room.
    "Okay," he agreed. He sat down in the small chair that Mrs. Bennett had pulled out for him. He picked up his scissors and looked around at the other children, each of them carefully cutting orange paper. Sam made a small starting snip.
    "Tigers are sort of the same color as pumpkins," Sam announced to his friends.
    "Yeah," Eli said. "And with big giant teeth. I'm going to make big tiger teeth in my pumpkin."

    Sam ran his tongue over his own small teeth. He cut meticulously around the side of his circle. He thought about teeth, how interesting they were, and about all of the hats he had left.
    "Speaking of teeth," Sam announced to the table, "tomorrow I'm going to talk about gators."
    The other children at the table stared at him. "Gators?" repeated Becky, in her beginning-to-be-a-crybaby voice. "
Alligators?
" she asked. She put her half-finished pumpkin down.
    "Yes," Sam told her. "But don't be scared. I'm going to tell about how zookeepers capture alligators. And how we wrestle them. And how—"
    Sam noticed that none of the children at his table were cutting out pumpkins anymore. He noticed, too, that Mrs. Bennett was looking over with a small warning frown on her face.
    "Children," Sam said, in his stern but kindly teacher voice, "let's get back to work now. Let's pay attention to our pumpkins."

9

    "Don't you want to change your clothes, Sam?" Mrs. Krupnik asked. She was folding clean laundry on the kitchen table. "Here. How about this?" She held up a pair of denim Osh-Kosh overalls.
    Sam shook his head. "I'm going to wear my zooman suit all the time."
    "All the time? Even to bed?" His mom laughed.
    "No, I'll wear my stars-and-planets pajamas to bed. But I have to wear my zooman suit every day because that's what zookeepers do."
    "And the hat, too?"
    "I have to wear a different hat each day," Sam explained. "But maybe I don't have to wear it at home." He shook his head inside the Tigers cap. He had discovered quite by accident that if he shook his head fast, sometimes the cap, because it was so large, wouldn't shake. The cap would continue pointing straight ahead even though Sam's head was turned to the side. It was a very interesting phenomenon, Sam thought. But it wasn't very comfortable.

    For now, he took the Tigers hat off. He could see better with it off. At school, his paper pumpkin had been a little lopsided because he hadn't been able to see well while cutting.
    His mother finished folding the underwear and lined everything up neatly in piles; then she put it all into the straw laundry basket and carried it upstairs. Sam followed her.
    "I'll make us each a you-know-what in a minute," she said, as she put the folded towels on shelves in a hall closet.
    "What's a