INTRODUCTION

IT CAN’T BE THAT HARD to write a book, right?

I mean, if Charlie Joe Jackson can do it, anyone can do it.

So I thought I’d write a book about the time I became a movie star.

My book will be different from Charlie Joe’s books, though.

For one thing, my book will have way more pictures, because I like to doodle a lot, and I’m better at drawing than I am at writing.

And also, I won’t use as many fancy words as Charlie Joe does. He likes to show off his vocabulary. He’s all like, “I don’t like to read, but I’m so smart that I still know all these big words.”

Well, so what. I don’t know nearly as many big words as Charlie Joe, but last time I checked, he wasn’t in a big Hollywood movie.

So there.

And I just want to say one other thing before we get going.

Everything that happened in this book happened because I’m kind of a troublemaker.

So I think the moral of the story is: If you get in trouble, interesting things will happen.

1

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO NOT STEAL POM-POMS

“STOP HIM! STOP THAT BOY!”

That was Mrs. Collins yelling at me, as usual.

She yelled at me a lot because, for some reason, I do a lot of annoying things to her daughter, Eliza. I don’t really know why I do them. I used to think it was because she was so pretty and I knew she would never like someone like me, so I decided to make that decision easy for her by being a jerk. But then I got a girlfriend, and you would think that would make me less interested in annoying Eliza. But I was just as interested in annoying her as ever. Maybe because I knew she could take it. She has no problem sticking up for herself, that’s for sure. And her mom has no problem sticking up for her, either.

“STOP!” she yelled again.

But I didn’t stop.

It’s not like I planned it or anything. I’m not a big planner, like Charlie Joe. But when I walked by the cheerleaders on my way to soccer practice and I saw Eliza put her pom-poms on the grass, I was like, how can I not take them? Eliza wasn’t even paying attention, since she was in the middle of one of those pyramid-formation things. And anyway, I knew I could outrun Eliza. But what I didn’t realize was that Eliza’s mom was there, too. She was probably sucking up to the coach, like all parents do. So anyway, Eliza is jumping around and not paying any attention, but the minute I grabbed those pom-poms, I heard a scream: “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

I looked up, saw Mrs. Collins staring down at me like an angry giraffe, and just took off.

I can easily outrun Mrs. Collins, I thought to myself.

But the only problem was that she got in her car.

I was pretty sure I couldn’t outrun her car.

But I was sure going to try.

Text copyright © 2016 by Tommy Greenwald

Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Rebecca Roher