Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing Chapter 7 Summary

The Flying Train Committee

  • At school, Peter's teacher assigns a project about the city and puts them all into "committees." Peter's partnered up with Jimmy Fargo (yay) and Sheila (boo) and they're assigned the topic of "Transportation."
  • Sheila thinks that she's smarter than everyone else, so she immediately takes the wheel and says that she'll be in charge of their booklet. Peter and Jimmy can work on the poster.
  • Their committee goes to the library and checks out all sorts of books on transportation, and agree that they'll meet every Tuesday and Thursday for the next few weeks.
  • In one meeting, Peter tells Jimmy and Sheila that all of New York City's traffic problems would be solved if they just outlawed cars, buses, and taxis and instead built a huge monorail system.
  • Sheila thinks this is a stupid, impractical idea, but she says that Peter can write his five pages of the project on the monorail. Jimmy will write five pages about pollution, and she'll write ten pages on the history of transportation in the city.
  • She also tells them that they need to get her their portions of the report early so that she can copy it all over in her handwriting, since they should have a single consistent document.
  • When Sheila starts nitpicking on the boys' poster, they get mad and tell her that being on a committee doesn't mean that she can just boss them around. That shuts her up, but Sheila just grabs her stuff and leaves in a huff.
  • One day though, Fudge sneaks into Peter's room and scribbles all over the poster that he and Jimmy have spent weeks working on. It's ruined.
  • Peter completely loses it and starts crying and accusing his mother of loving Fudge more than she loves him.
  • He also asks for a lock on his door, but his mother says that it's not necessary, and that Fudge won't ruin his homework again. Fat chance.
  • Jimmy's incredibly understanding about having to put together the entire poster again, and Sheila doesn't mention it.
  • When the project's all done, the boys get mad at Sheila because she writes on the booklet that she hand-wrote the whole thing.
  • She takes off her name so that it's all fair, and Peter shows his parents the brand-spanking new poster, which looks pretty spiffy.
  • At the end of the day, Peter goes into his room to relax and finds Fudge sitting on the floor with Dribble's bowl, cutting his own hair.
  • Peter snatches Dribble away and cleans out all the hair, and their mom takes Fudge to get a real haircut at the barbershop.
  • Peter's dad comes home and installs a chain-lock on his door. Hallelujah. Now he can keep Fudge's pesky hands away from his stuff.
  • The presentation at school goes off without a hitch, except when their teacher asks them why exactly they have a flying train on the poster, which is exactly what bossy Sheila pointed out when Peter and Jimmy drew a train without the ground underneath it.
  • Maybe Sheila is right about some things after all.